Join the Accessibility Movement at jaccede.com

On Saturday October 8th Jaccede.com is organising an Accessibility Day in Grenoble to raise awareness for people with limited mobility and promote accessible locations in the city.

Desipite being surrounded by mountains, Grenoble is a highly accessible city, and one of the few to have an innovative official project underway to make three areas of the city completely accessible by 2015.

However, finding an accessible school, university or company, going shopping or travelling around … all of these normally simple activities can easily become a nightmare for people with li­mited mobility. Jaccede.com’s objective is to promote equal opportunities for such people by:

• Making information that will improve the daily lives for people with limited mobility (PLM) readily accessible
• Inspiring people with limited mobility to participate in a mass movement and encourage them to come out of isolation
• Increasing public awareness of accessibility issues and of the French law of February 11, 2005
• Promoting accessible locations
• Creating a movement and civic consciousness promoting accessibility for everyone

Jaccede.com’s Accessibility Days aim to:

• Identify accessible locations and register them on www.jaccede.com to make them available to everyone
• Raise awareness among local businesses, public officials and the public regarding the advantages of accessibility

October 8th Grenoble Accessibility Day:

• Meeting point: La Maison des Associations – 6 Rue Berthe de Boissieux
• 10–11.30am: welcome and training
• 11.30–3pm: collection of information on accessible locations using the Jaccede kit – lunch break
• 3.30–5pm: uploading of info and addresses on www.jaccede.com
• 5pm: feedback on the day and closing drinks (back at Maison des Associations)

Jaccede.com is still scouting for plucky volunteers for the big day, both to roam the streets for accessible locations, and also to help the organizers with the practicalities such as handing out maps, welcoming volunteers etc.

Sign up at www.jaccede.com and join the Accessibility Movement or call 01 43 71 98 10 to find out more. The site is soon going multilingual, and plans to branch out its operations in the UK and abroad.

The façade of Cité Scolaire Internationale, host to the American School of Grenoble

ASG headmistress Carol Margaret Bitner

The ASG logo

The many flags of the Open House logo

English-speaking voyager Maureen Walsh describes the soft landing in Grenoble provided by the local expat association Open House.

Our sojourn from the United States this past July and our settlement in Grenoble for my husband’s one year sabbatical at the Grenoble Ecole de Management was sometimes fraught with both expected and unanticipated difficulties and inconveniences. Getting our OFII (l’Office Français de l’Immigration et de l’Intégration) stamps, cellphone, TV and Internet service, bank accounts and apartment in our adopted city took time, energy and patience. Now that that is behind us, it struck me how those trials were often softened by all the hospitable people who put out the “welcome mat” for us here in Grenoble.

Before we had left Raleigh, North Carolina for Grenoble, I had done a cursory Internet search for possible groups we might join to integrate ourselves more easily into French culture. At that time I came across Grenoble Life’s March 2010 piece, Anglophone Grenoble, a rough guide, and its reference to Open House Grenoble, a group that has been around helping English-speaking voyagers just like us since 1987. I tucked the link into my computer favorites list thinking that it just might be what we were looking for once we had finally touched down in Grenoble.

After settling into Grenoble, I bee-lined to the Open House Grenoble website to find some particulars about upcoming events we might be able to enjoy. I saw that they held a weekly Tuesday morning informal get-together called Coffee Chat at a local café where the conversational language was English. It sounded like the perfect introduction to the organization without having to broadcast our beginning French language ineptitude. We met at that time in the centre ville at Pain et Cie, but have since moved to Take-Away at La Caserne de Bonne. We were delighted to find a mixture of amicable French and English speaking people who seemed eager to befriend us.

Soon after, those of us who were regulars at Coffee Chat questioned why a similar morning meet-up couldn’t be created for speaking solely in French. (Yikes!) Café Français was born this January and slowly built a following on Thursday mornings coming together at our old stomping grounds, Pain et Cie café. This became a great opportunity to share a coffee, stumble over our French words and have native French speakers patiently help us with the practical issues we have negotiating life here in Grenoble.

When my husband, Steven, and I formally became card-carrying OHG members in September, we discovered the French-English Exchange group that meets two Friday mornings a month at CLEF (Association des Centres de loisirs Enfance et Famille). This group converses on impromptu topics and plays often humorous games aimed at language learning, dividing the time together between French and English conversations.

Getting our feet wet with the language groups led us to check out other OHG interest groups. No one organization can be all things to all people, but Steve and I have found that we can dabble in many groups that appeal to us. We have sometimes found our way on Thursday evenings to local Grenoble pubs including Le Family Pub for Chill-Out Evenings, stopping to share a drink and some conversation. And for me, the former English major, the Open House Book Group has filled a special spot. Our circle of between 10-12 bookworms gathers at the café, Le 5, at the Musée de Grenoble once a month where lively, stimulating and intelligent conversation ensues about the books we read in English. In the same location, once a month the Creative Writers Alliance meets to support both fledgling and veteran writers alike allowing them to share their trials and triumphs.

There are some OHG groups that we won’t be joining. Since we don’t have young children here in Grenoble, we don’t fit into the Baby & Toddler Activities group nor will we be participating in the holiday-related activities suited for older children. But as we still have some time ahead of our departure and with Spring on the horizon, we hope to join some of the outdoor groups that participate in Mountain & Outdoors activities and Cycling. Of interest, as well, is the fitness-oriented Wellness group that comes together at CLEF on Tuesday evenings with Hula dancing or occasional workshops featuring activities such as yoga, shiatsu, reflexology or aromatherapy.

Last, but definitely not least, OHG also provides opportunities to delve into the gustatory world. We already drink BEAUCOUP de café et de thé during language exchanges, but there is also an active Wine Tasting group which explores regional wines in members’ homes. With the planned monthly Lunch Out opportunities we can sample different Grenoble restaurants in the company of other adventuresome souls. Recently, we lunched at the Hôtel Lesdiguières, the lycée for hotel and restaurant management here in Grenoble, but with the myriad of restaurants in Grenoble we have an eclectic list from which to choose. Open House has also in past years hosted a Christmas Apéro and a Summer Picnic where members and their families have gathered together for good food and fun times in the spirit of the seasons.

Our life in Grenoble has undoubtedly been filled with one-of-a-kind opportunities and welcoming people. We have been fortunate to be able to partake of the Open House Grenoble activities, and we’re going to truly miss all these good friends when we must return to the U.S. So the next time a friend from home asks me how I spend my time here, I’ll just have to point them to this article or to our blog, A Year in Grenoble, and let them envy all the convivial opportunities we’re going to very reluctantly leave behind with our Open House friends.

Getting past no! Photo: Hey Tiffany!

Rebecca Skillman talks to Ellen François-Jacobs, facilitator of the Working Women’s Network of Grenoble workshop ‘Essentials of Successful Negotiation’, 28 May.

Rebecca Skillman: Why do you think the word “negotiation” strikes a note of fear in so many of us?

Ellen François-Jacobs: I believe it’s the classic “fear of the unknown”. In the United States, where I come from, we don’t get any formal negotiation training in school, and rarely even in college, unless we’re business majors. Yet it’s undeniably one of the most important skills we need throughout our personal and professional lives. Think about it … we negotiate for cars, apartments and houses, salaries and benefit packages, raises and promotions … but the majority of people have never acquired the basic skills to get the best possible outcomes for themselves. Instead, they end up “shooting from the hip” and just hoping for the best.

Rebecca: So, we have to formally learn how to negotiate in order to do it successfully?

Ellen: Well, not exactly! [laughs] Children are INCREDIBLE negotiators! Think back to when you were a child… didn’t you negotiate all the time with your parents? Bedtime, extra snacks, and later on it was curfews and car keys. A lot of it comes instinctively, I think. As kids, we even knew which parent to ask for which favors!

Rebecca: Well, then, why do we need to take a class if so much of it comes instinctively?

Ellen: Because, as adults, the stakes are often much higher. The location and size of our home, how much money we’re able to earn, the quality of education we can provide to our children, the vacations we’ll take … all of these are a direct result of our ability to negotiate. So it’s very important to put some structure into the process, and learn some basic strategies to help you get the best possible outcome when you negotiate. It’s also important to learn about situations where you may be able to negotiate, even when you don’t think you can. A few Euros here, a few Euros there … it all adds up!

Rebecca: Many of the members of WWNG are self-employed, independent contractors. How can this workshop help them in particular?

Ellen: As an independent contractor myself, I can definitely attest to the power of good negotiation skills in working with clients. I’m a firm believer in the “win-win” philosophy of negotiation, and that’s the method I’ll be teaching during the workshop. When you’re negotiating the scope of a project, the time frame, the price, the payment terms … It’s extremely important to be able to identify the interests and objectives of your client, and how they can dovetail with your own. When both of you come away feeling good about the outcome of your initial negotiation, it can form the foundation for a successful long-term relationship with the customer.

In order to do that, I’ll be covering some basic concepts in negotiating: you’ll learn how to identify positions, interests and objectives. You’ll learn why you can’t negotiate without a BATNA (best alternative to a negotiated agreement). And you’ll see how having a target point and a reservation point can actually give you more confidence during a negotiation.

Rebecca: Will the attendees actually be negotiating?

Ellen: Yes indeed! We’ll spend the morning going through some basic negotiation theory, and learning how to prepare for a negotiation. As with so many other things, 80% of the success of your negotiation will be the direct result of the quality of your preparation, so we’ll take time to do that right. During the afternoon, the attendees will partner up and do some actual negotiation simulations. Nothing tough … we’ll work on buying a car, negotiating a job offer … you know, the basics. And then we’ll debrief after everyone has negotiated to share outcomes and see who got the best deals … and how they did it. It’ll be lots of fun, and very ludique, as the French say.

Rebecca: And finally, what do you hope that the attendees will come away with?

Ellen: Confidence … absolutely. The understanding that negotiation isn’t some mystical, magical process reserved for used car salesmen or high level business executives — but rather, a skill that can be learned and mastered, and then used each and every day, in all kinds of personal and professional situations.

Ellen François-Jacobs is a freelance corporate trainer, and a visiting instructor of Intercultural Studies at the Grenoble Graduate School of Business and the London School of Business and Finance. She has taught workshops on Business Communication Skills and Relationship Selling since 1980 in the United States, Canada, Mexico and Europe.

‘Essentials of Successful Negotiation’, a one-day, active-participation workshop, will be offered by the Working Women’s Network of Grenoble on Saturday 28 May from 9h to 17h, at the Grenoble Ecole de Management. This workshop is targeted to professionals who have never attended a professional negotiation course, but who wish to acquire basic skills which can be put into practice immediately. It will cost €30–45 for WWNG members and €85 for non-members. This includes the full-day seminar, lunch with the group, and two coffee breaks. You can register and pay online here.

The London Pub. Photo: Guillaume Cattiaux

In the second part of her blog Footprints in Grenoble, American student Aleigha Page talks about French mealtime etiquette and her favourite establishments for desserts, coffee and people-watching.

Studying abroad in Grenoble is by far one of the best life choices I have made. I have been able to learn about and live in a new city that prior to the study abroad process, I had never heard of. In my opinion, Grenoble is the perfect size city for study abroad. It is large enough to offer variety, but yet it is small enough so that it is not overwhelming. The centre ville (city center) is where most of the stores, restaurants, cafés, pubs, and nightlife are. I live in the centre ville and therefore I am within walking distance of everything I need: places to shop, cafés, and nightlife.

In French fashion, Grenoble is replete with cafés, offering in and out door sitting. One of my personal goals for studying abroad was to establish a regular café. I shopped around for my café during my early weeks, and I found it. Pain & Cie is my favorite café in Grenoble because it is large and spacious, offering a warm atmosphere. The interior has hardwood floors, stone walls, and an unfinished wooden ceiling. The tables are made of thick wood with metal chairs. The coffee they serve here is organic, and on every table is a glass filled with white and brown sugar cubes. I generally order an espresso but, once a week, I treat myself to a café au lait, which is coffee and steamed milk, and it is served in a bowl here. I throw in a couple of sugar cubes and stir them around the foam. The desserts at Pain & Cie are delicious. I do not know the exact name of my favorite dessert here, but it is a multiple layered chocolate creation. Three of the layers are cake, two are a chocolate mousse, a few thin layers of caramel, and then, the bottom layer is a textured, nutty tasting layer. I have made speculations that it is either a praline mousse, or a hazelnut spread. For chocolate lovers, this cake is a must on your to-do list. Not a big chocolate fan? No worries, because they have cheese cake that is absolutely divine, but I am sure any of their wide selections are equally delicious.

As for nightlife, Grenoble is full of places to find a pint of beer or a glass of wine. One of my favorite pubs is The Subway Bar, which attracts a hip, sporty crowd of French students. The drinks are very inexpensive here – I can get a pint for three euros, and they have a “cocktail of the week” for two euros, which are excellent choices for a student budget. London Pub is another I enjoy because of their atmosphere. It is London-themed, and covered in British memorabilia – Beatles posters, pictures of Big Ben, football tournaments, etc. There is always a huge crowd here, which makes for a fun night. My final favorite place is Tord Bayeaux, literally ‘twisted guts’ or ‘rotgut’. This bar has a wall filled with little barrels of strange wine flavors. My favorite flavor is a green, apple kiwi wine, which tastes like hard candy. They also play fun music here, such as the Lion King song “Hakuna Ma Tata”.

I enjoy promenading around the centre ville, without any particular direction, weaving in and out of stores to see what they have on display. On warm, sunny days, there are always lots of people sitting outside cafés, on benches, or walking around. I think it is very interesting to pick a park bench and people watch. I am continuously fascinated to see what people are wearing, how they wear it, and their interaction with others. One observation I have made is that I see fewer people walking around with a cell phone attached to their ear than I do in the US. Granted, I do see the phones out quite a bit, but not as frequently compared to where I live. There is always a vendor nearby to purchase a gauffre (waffle) or crêpe to munch on while people-watching.

Long before settling on Grenoble for my study abroad destination, I always knew that I wanted to live with a host family, because they can offer aspects of French culture far better than I could pick up living on my own. Dinner time is when I spend the most time with my host parents, and it usually lasts an hour. I have been able to learn French mealtime etiquette, and several traditional dishes. Etiquette is very important to the French – even at the campus cafeteria and an elementary school I visited they use all three eating utensils and eat in three courses. The French typically have wine or water with their dinners, and bread on the side. The hostess serves the wine, and will ask if you would like more. Never ask, and never, ever, touch the wine bottle. For bread, leave it to the side of the plate on the table, and tear off small bits. Do not eat it whole. A salad is served as the first course, or the entrée. Le plat principal (main dish) generally consists of a meat and vegetable, or quiche with my host family. Dessert can range from a cup of pudding to fruit to a homemade dish. I love that the French treat their food so respectfully and make meal time feel special.

My time here in Grenoble is quickly winding down, but the experience has been amazing. I have made friends that I am sure will last a lifetime because there are no other people who will ever 100% understand my stories about studying here other than those with whom I made these memories. Aside from learning French and about France, I have learned quite a bit about myself. Being outside of the bubble that is my life, I have had the time to reflect on what I want out of my life, who matters in my life, and what I want to accomplish. Studying abroad has not only opened my eyes to a new culture, but also to a new aspect of me.

Read part one of Footprints in Grenoble

A detail from the cover of Thora van Male's book, 'Liaisons généreuses'

Grenoble Life talks to Thora van Male, author of Les liaisons généreuses – l’apport de français à la langue anglaise, ahead of a talk she is giving organised by Alliance Grenoble-Oxford on April 7.

Grenoble Life: What is the topic of the talk you have organised with Alliance Grenoble-Oxford?

Thora van Male: I’m going to be talking about my latest book, Liaisons généreuses. It deals with the huge debt that English owes to the French language. We English speakers (I’m from British Columbia, in Canada) are more aware of this than the French are. My impression is that in France, people are so obsessed with the supposed invasion of English into French, that they don’t realize that, a) English would not be much at all without French, and that, b) a lot of the words that are coming from English to French are just returning home, so to speak.

When you see the many many areas where words from French predominate in English, it really makes you think; such subjects as law, religion, cooking, life in society, politics. There are very few areas of life in English whose vocabulary is not affected by – French.

GL: Who should come to the talk?

Thora: Well, I will be speaking in English, which means the talk is aimed at people who are interested in and speak some English. All the AGO people speak French, though, as do I, and the question session after the talk will be bilingual and bicultural, so to speak.

In terms of the content of my talk, it will probably be more of an eye-opener for French people than for the Anglo-Saxophones, as I call us. However, I intend to make the talk interesting and accessible to everyone. And I hope to provide a few chuckles, if not guffaws.

GL: How has the French relationship to the English language changed since you arrived in France?

Thora: Well, you know about the Loi Toubon that was voted in 1994; its objective was to prohibit the use of languages other than French (Read my lips: Eng-lish!) in official French documents, in business, in advertising, etc. This law also established quota rules about how much English-language music could be played on the radio, etc.

Just to put that into perspective, remember that the provincial government of Quebec had voted its Charter of the French language in 1977; this put legislative authority behind the enforcement of French as the language of government and law, as well as that of work, instruction, communication and commerce.

That being said — and people recognize this — English exercises a certain attraction to French speakers in France; dropping an English word here and there is considered to confer a touch of class. Conversely, as you know, the prestige of French exercises a huge influence on English speakers, to this day. Of course, English no longer borrows what I might call “meat and potato” words from French, words that English doesn’t have a name for — this is something I’ll be talking about — but there are still French words coming into English. I found this really noticeable in the latest issue of The Economist’s Intelligent Life. But also in a book of Woody Allen’s witticisms…

GL: As someone who has taught English at the University here in Grenoble and published books for learners of English, what changes have you witnessed in the way the language is taught in the French educational system?

Thora: There has been a continuing move towards getting learners to work with English in a “real world” environment. The conjugation tables and the translations that I grew up with gave way to audio language laboratories, but still with a lot of rote work. The Internet has totally changed that, and the focus is moving more towards experiencing English as it is spoken in environments that are meaningful to each learner. As I see it, that is a general trend.

GL: What needs to be improved?

Thora: Have you got a couple of hours? Judging from my students, I would say that in secondary education they need to hear more authentic English and to be dragged away from translation. They also need real-life experiences with English (Wouldn’t it be nice if English language films were shown on TV with English subtitles …). They also need to shed some inhibitions.

You remember the passage in My Fair Lady when Henry Higgins says “In France, every Frenchman knows his language from A to Z; they never care what they do, actually, as long as they pronounce it properly.” Well there is a grain of truth in this. Students just don’t want to pronounce a word unless they can spell it, and once they have the spelling they tend to “spell-pronounce” — you know, pronounce the L in ‘could’, etc. — in fact, pronounce every word as if it were French. The insecurity involved in jumping in and pronouncing a word that they might not know, or might not know the spelling of, just petrifies them!

But I should get off my hobby-horse: I love my job, and am quite willing, year in, year out, to put my heart and soul into teaching English to my students.

GL: Where do you teach?

Thora: Now, I teach only at the Institute of Political Science on the campus. But like so many expats (though I now have dual nationality) I taught English all over the place in Grenoble before I managed to get a post in the French university system.

GL: When did you originally come to Grenoble and why?

Thora: I came in 1970, with a scholarship from the French government. And I just never went back to Canada! I had always loved French … I think it was my mother who got me going when I was a child, when she taught me that silly song about “La plume de ma tante”. Had I stayed in Canada, I would no doubt have become a French teacher.

GL: You are a published expert on French dictionary illustrations.

Thora: Yes, I am, but my expertise is limited to those little ABC primer type compositions that represent several objects whose name starts with a certain letter. Though this is common in children’s’ alphabet books, France is the only country I know of that has them in dictionaries for adults as well. So when you look at the alphabet illustrations in a dictionary dated, say, in the 1850s, you have a sort of snapshot of French culture and society at that time. It is fascinating. To my amazement, this is a field that had never been researched until I got involved in it. It has been a lot of fun. Since there was no existing research on the subject, I really had to start at zero, and create the tools to analyse all these pictures. I even coined a word for them, since French didn’t really have one; and that involved a meeting Alain Rey, the author of the Petit Robert, a very interesting experience. I love the “treasure hunt” side of this work: you’ve got all these pictures, and you have to figure out what they represent. Plus, I’m always on the lookout for some dictionary that I haven’t yet come across.

GL: What sparked off this particular passion?

Thora: Well, I often jokingly answer this question by saying the answer is contained in an alphabetical list of things I love: A as in alphabet, B as in brocante, C as in calligraphy, D as in dictionary, E as in aesthetics, F as in France, G as in Grenoble, H as in hedonism … The dictionaries I work on are up to 150 years old, and their alphabetical illustrations really combine these elements. In fact I love the alphabet so much that one of my recent books is subtitled La Vie secrète de l’alphabet.

GL: You have also curated a touring exhibition about dictionary ornaments. Tell us about that and where we can see it.

Thora: Shortly after I published Art Dico, I was invited by the Lyons printing museum to curate an exhibition there. It was a lot of fun choosing among the many old illustrations, having huge blow-ups made of them, and showing the general public how rich this apparently naïve form of illustration can be. Another fun aspect was rounding up dozens of artefacts, finding the actual objects that appear in the illustrations. I presented two groups of 26 items, one for children and one for adults, and the game for the visitors was simply to find the names of all the objects. Many of these artefacts were things that people just don’t see today. What I loved about that part of the exhibition was that it showed how the world reflects the dictionary, as opposed to how the dictionary reflects the world. But I could go on about that for hours, too …

Chance being what it is, once the exhibition was over in Lyons, I met a man whose surname is almost identical to mine and who is both a calligrapher and an alphabet-exhibition manager. What serendipity! Bernard Vanmalle has now taken the ART DICO exhibition under his wing. It has circulated widely in France (mostly in public libraries and médiathèques). Unfortunately, it was in Grenoble three years ago for several months, so I do not think it will be here again in the near future …

GL: This wasn’t your first exhibition, though. You exhibited photographs of rue Brocherie at the Grenoble Maison de la Culture in 1981.

Thora: That was another really interesting project. I asked all the merchants on the street I live on to stand on their doorstep for a picture, and to tell me about the past history of their shop. Then I produced a set of panels that combined my photographs and some fabulous line drawings done by a man who worked at the Maison de la Culture at the time; I wrote a text about the history of each shop, and calligraphed it onto each panel.

This exhibition doesn’t circulate any more, and I hope that it will at some point join the Musée Dauphinois collection.

GL: Tell us about your charitable work and how our readers can get involved.

Thora: For several years, now, I have been volunteering in a soup kitchen in the centre of the old town. The association provides breakfast every morning, hot lunch twice a week in the winter months, clothing, food hampers and a variety of other services. The people who come are not all homeless, but they are all in fairly distressing situations (this can include being a refugee, having mental health issues, drug or alcohol problems, or just plain poverty). We have between 40 and 100 people every morning.

If your readers want to help us, one thing we are always in need of is men’s shoes. They can be dropped off at 4 bis rue du Vieux Temple, any week day between 8:30 a.m. and 10 a.m. The association also accepts monetary donations; I myself am very interested in donations in kind, however, and can promise you that any shoes that are given will find a pair of needy feet!

Thora van Male will be talking about her new book at Maison des Langues on campus on Thursday April 7 at 6.30pm. Contact Alliance Grenoble-Oxford for more information.

Wing It Productions logo

Grenoble Life talks to Hélène Perrin-Gouron, Vicki Bernard and Katie Coakley – aka Wing It Productions – a new English theatre group for secondary school pupils in and around Grenoble.

Grenoble Life: Who is Wing It Productions?

Hélène Perrin-Gouron: Three passionate women who have always loved and done some theater; one French having lived in the US, one English, and one Irish.

Vicki Bernard: Sounds like the beginning of a joke…

Katie Coakley: Oh thanks, ladies. I’m the Irish one (‘wanting desperately’ to change the subject)! We’re part of the abc anglais association, which aims at helping people ‘learn, improve or maintain their level of English in the most natural manner’. Our goal is to open this theatre activity to the entire secondary school community in and around Grenoble.

Hélène: That is… for this first year. I have the High School population (15-18/19) in mind too, the college students, etc.

GL: What is the philosophy of the group?

Vicki: Having worked so often with young people, we have really been able to see how much the theatre can bring them in terms of self-confidence, team-work (relying on others), their creativity and imagination.

Katie: The fact that we use English purely as a vehicle means that they improve their English without even realising it.

Hélène: I would add to this that one of the most positive things to come out of the work with young ones is the bonding that they experience. The show becomes bigger than every single one of them, and us.

Katie: Very much so! It also eradicates the age differences.

GL: What ideas do you have for your first productions?

Katie: Although we’re going to keep that secret, we can say that we’re going down the comedy road.

Vicki: Our lips are sealed.

GL: What have some of the major challenges been getting started and how have you overcome them?

Katie: To start with, we had a real dilemma. Do we create our own association or do we become part of an existing one?

Vicki: We were very fortunate to come across abc anglais (through Helen McEwan who worked on the Cité Scolaire Internationale pantomime with us.) They took us under their wing.

After that, our main challenge was sorting out a lot of things all at the same time: reading umpteen scripts to find a story, organizing and advertizing the auditions…

Katie: And making sure that all this gets done behind the scenes without a hitch. That in itself is quite a challenge!

Hélène: I, personally, was happy to have help with all that work that no one ever imagines exits. How to overcome the constant challenges? With ‘your head in the stars and your feet on the ground’ (i.e. persistence, patience, with zest, and more persistence, more patience, etc.)

GL: What kind of people are you looking for and how can they audition?

Katie: Anyone of any nationality between 11 and 15 with a good knowledge of English and an excess of enthusiasm.

Hélène: You can be French, British, American, or whatever; but you must know that the whole activity is going to be run entirely in English.

Vicki: In other words, you can come from Mars …

Hélène: Or Venus …

Vicki: As long as you can get along in English and are prepared to improve through taking part.

Hélène: If you wish to join us for this thrilling adventure, go to www.abcanglais.org, section ‘collège’. All the information you need is there!

GL: Tell us a bit about your theatrical backgrounds

Hélène: I started doing theater at university, in the US. Then I was asked to keep going with the county community theater. I thoroughly enjoyed working eight months solid on the ‘Man of La Mancha’ musical. I was there six days a week and I can’t think of any moment not being sparkling! Then these past few years, I was general director of the C.S.I. panto where every single cast has been my favorite!

‘Out of hours’, I’m a scriptwriter and have worked on long features such as Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, or Pearl Harbor; and if you’re dying for more names, you can go to my LinkedIn profile.

Vicki:  I was involved in acting in a semi-professional theatre in England. I did drama all through school, acting and directing as house and drama captain. I acted during my university days too and put on a couple of plays in the English Department at U.3 in Grenoble. Finally, I was part of the panto direction team at the C.S.I. for two years.

Katie: I’ve done theatre with small children in Ireland. Here in Grenoble, I’ve worked on the C.S.I. panto for two years.

GL: What is the potential of Grenoble in particular for this type of theatre group in terms of audiences and participants?

Hélène, Vicki, and Katie: (with one voice) Massive!

GL: Thanks ladies. Watch this space for updates and news about Wing It Productions.

Les timbres!

US newcomer Maureen Walsh reports on obtaining long-stay and student visas through the Office Français de l’Immigration et de l’Intégration for a year in Grenoble.

Arriving as newcomers to Grenoble from a small town in North Carolina in July 2010, my husband, Steve, and I were trying to carefully follow the letter of the French law regarding completing the steps necessary for our stay in France. He had recently been accepted into the AQ Bridge Program at the Grenoble Ecole de Management. This was an opportunity to spend a sabbatical year away from his position as the NC State University Director of the Engineering Entrepreneurs Program and explore new possibilities in a foreign country. So it would have surprised many of our friends to know that in our initial 2 ½ months stay in France, we hadn’t actually perfected all of the legalities. This was not malice aforethought, mind you, but only due to the timing of our arrival. Not until the middle of September 2010 did we get things settled! That was when our little yellow OFII (Office Français de l’Immigration et de l’Intégration) cards were pasted inside our American passports. We breathed a sigh of relief. We were now “bona fide”!

The process began in North Carolina. Since we hoped to stay in Grenoble for a full year, Steve applied for a student visa, and I needed a long-term stay visa in order to live in France. That involved a LOT of paperwork – there was the NC State Bureau of Investigation report, an FBI report, fingerprinting, certifications from our bank as to our financial worth, proof of health insurance, proof of purchase of airline tickets, certified birth certificates, marriage certificate, proof of acceptance into a French school, statements from me regarding the reason I was applying for entry into France along with a promise that I would not work while in France, and proof of a commitment to a residence in France (rental contract). It seemed like the list would never end.

We needed three copies of each item for both of our folders and this all had to be translated into French. In addition, there was the Long Stay Visa application form (Demande Pour Un Visa De Long Séjour) and the OFII form (Visa de Long Sejour-Demande D’Attestation OFII) with the top part filled out. A lot of trees sacrificed their lives for our trip to, and our stay in, France.

Once we had assembled all that, we made an appointment to go to our regional French Consulate in Atlanta, Georgia – a “mere” seven hour drive away. We made this appointment on-line and traveled there on an overnight trip in April. The meeting was not what we expected. I thought we would be invited into a cozy room to meet with a consulate representative to present our paperwork and be interviewed – perhaps accompanied by a glass of French wine, too? On the contrary, we arrived and soon discovered that the official Long Stay Visa application form posted on the website of the French Consulate in Atlanta that we had printed and completed, in “impeccable French” I might add, had just been completely changed the previous week. The new questions didn’t match the previous form. A sense of impending doom followed by a mild feeling of panic began to spread within the confines of my head. We stood at a narrow counter and worked to fill out the new form on the fly sans dictionnaire!

When the interview process took place, we were standing at another counter with the consulate employee sitting behind glass with a tiny slot through which we passed our massive paper pile in 8 to 10 pages stages. Time stood still. The employee would ask us questions (in French) and forget to turn on the microphone. We had to continually ask the him to repeat his questions and to turn on the sound – I thought I was living the drive-up window scene in the movie, Wayne’s World. He swiftly shuffled our papers, picked up the phone a few times to call France and kept looking at Steve suspiciously because he was applying for a Student Visa. This was the first line of defense those in America encounter in their quest for a visa to France! (Does the word perspiration mean anything to you?)

We left the office exhausted and made the return drive home. And waited … Our passports with our visas pasted in were returned to us about a month later in the prepaid FedEx envelopes that we had provided. Another hurdle passed. We were on our way to France!

Once we entered France via Switzerland, the next step for us was to find a permanent residence. We had arranged to stay in an extended-stay apartment for our first month in Grenoble, but we would need a more permanent address for the duration of our stay. In addition, we needed fixed and mobile phone numbers to put on the OFII form. Would it ever end? After the arduous work to acquire those, we sent off the paperwork by registered mail on August 4th. Timing for that was not, shall we say, optimum. We soon learned that most of France is not working in August because ils sont en vacances! Finally, we received letters telling us that our OFII forms had been received. We still had to wait to be contacted for our appointments to complete the process. A week and a half later, a letter arrived outlining what we needed to do for our appointments that were scheduled for the 16th of September for Steve and the 17th for me.

We were nearing the finish line! We needed to have a un examen radiographique, un photo tête nue, un examen clinique général and beaucoup d’argent. For the money part, we visited the Préfecture for taxe perçue à l’occasion de la délivrance du premier titre de séjour. This meant we had to buy des timbres á la caisse de préfecture in advance to cover the fee for the OFII validation. The timbres look like postage stamps and are similar to the stamps paid for when you complete a purchase on a house. For Steve that amounted to 55€ ($71.75) and for me, 340€ ($443.57) (exchange rate: 17/09/2010). We understand that in the U.S. the amount can be closer to $1,000.00 per person, so we think we got a bargain.

As a student, Steve had to first go to the Centre de Santé which is located near the train station in Grenoble and have a basic physical. Then, two days later, he needed to board tram C and head off to the Domain Université Centre de Santé to get a chest x-ray at one of those mobile units set up in a parking lot. A week later he returned to the first Centre de Santé to pick up his certified medical certificate. Finally, he was instructed to go to the OFII office with all his paperwork to complete the process. He was told they take a limited number of applicants each day. Since they don’t make specific appointments, show up early and try to get in the door – at 6’2″ and 90 kgs he was ready for action. He arrived an hour before the opening and was the first one in line. He presented all his pieces to the puzzle, and they pasted a card in the passport and covered it with a film cover. One down, one to go.

My requirements were a little different. As I am not a student, I was instructed to report to the OFII office at 13h 30 for my x-ray, and my medical exam would be at 14 h. I was pleased. It seemed that I had an appointment and would escape the running around that Steve had had; it would be “one-stop shopping”. Wrong. I arrived at 13h25 (the bureau is closed from 12h until 13h30 for lunch) and found a long line of people waiting for the opening. I joined the line, and I glanced at the paper the person in front of me held. It looked just like mine. Exactly! We ALL had the SAME appointment time.

The overworked employee at the desk dealt with people speaking many different languages. Some were anxious (like me), and some became belligerent when they were told their dossier was incomplete and that they would have to return with some other required paperwork. After sitting in the too-small waiting room for a half-hour, I was called back for the exams. The x-ray tech showed me to a dressing room and told me to disrobe to the waist. I looked around for the usual jacket I always get to put on when I have any upper body pictures taken. Nothing. Leave your modesty at the door. That done, I moved on to the nurse. She weighed me, stuck me for, as she said, “le sucre” (diabetes test), took my blood pressure, and then we proceeded to the height and eye charts.

If you know the French alphabet pronunciation, you remember that vowels and some consonants are pronounced differently from their English look-a likes. (i is “e”, e is “ai”, g is “jay”, j is “gee.”) We had to remind ourselves of that when responding. As a side story, we have an Australian friend who told us of her experience at OFII. She didn’t know any French when she arrived, and when she read the eye chart, she answered using the English (Australian) pronunciation of the letters. The medical people all thought that she was legally blind!

Getting our OFII stamps has given us the freedom we need to fully enjoy our experience here in Europe. Until we got that, if we had left France, we were told, we would not have been allowed to re-enter through the borders without returning to the U.S. and reapplying for a new visa. With our OFII stamps and our American passports, we can pursue our wanderlust. It didn’t take us long to pull out the map and start eyeing all the possibilities that became open to us with just that “little yellow card.”

To see our further adventures, please visit our blog: walshesingrenoble.wordpress.com

examen radiographique: xray
un photo tête nue: photo of a head without a covering
un examen clinique général: medical exam
le taxe perçue à l’occasion de la délivrance du premier titre de séjour: the charge collected at the issue of the first residence permit
le caisse de prefecture: prefecture cashier
centre de santé: health center

Daniel Mathieu at Cavavin Grenoble St-Martin D’Heres

Grenoble Life talks to entrepreneur-sommelier Daniel Mathieu of Cavavin Grenoble St-Martin d’Hères about wine, setting up his business and tasting sessions in English.

Grenoble Life: Tell us about Cavavin Grenoble St-Martin D’Heres. When did you open and what can we find inside?

Daniel Mathieu: I opened the shop five months ago, in September. My goal was to build a special place, nice-looking (with wood, color, lights), where you can discover the world of wine in a friendly atmosphere. I have music all day, jazz every evening, and organize a free tasting every Friday and Saturday; my so-called “happy apéro”.

I offer 1,500 types of wine, Champagne, whisky: I have a lot of affordable vins de copains, starting at €3, and I am a specialist of Italian and organic wines (BIO). Most mportantly, I also organize wine tasting courses every Thursday evening, when we take the time to taste wines, talk about each winery, and try wine and food pairing.

GL: Tell us about your wine-tasting courses for English speakers. What made you decide to organize them?

Daniel: There are lots of foreign people who come to Grenoble for a few weeks/months and are not comfortable enough in French to attend a French speaking course. They are students, scientists, or often the wife or husband of somebody coming to Grenoble. I invite them to discover an important part of the French way of life: wine, and wine and food pairing!  By the way, the next “Wine tasting basics” evening is on Thursday March 10.

I also organize private wine tasting evenings in English, for companies that want to have a fun and “French” event for their international seminars, sales meetings, supplier congresses etc.

GL: Where/how did you learn the wine trade?

Daniel: I had been a wine enthusiast for years, and decided to go further and learn the job of sommelier, which I did in 2010, graduating from the wine university of Suze la Rousse, near Orange.

GL: You have changed your profession. Why?

Daniel: My first motivation was to become independent and create my own business, locally. Then I felt I would learn more, and have more fun by doing something completely different – I had been working in the car, IT and consumer electronics for 25 years – in an area I really enjoyed. That’s what drove my decision.

GL: Tell us about wine from this region – any good? Give us some recommendations.

Daniel: I really like wines from Vallée du Rhone and Savoie. Some of my preferred ones?  Montez for St Joseph/Condrieu/Côte Rôtie, Dupasquier for Roussette/Mondeuse; or Quenard for Chignin Bergeron from Savoie.

I discovered local-local wines (I mean wines from Grésivaudan) only a few months ago in a wine tasting event at the Millesime festival in Grenoble. I was particularly impressed – and decided to sell this wine in my shop – by the Mas du Bruchet in Meylan: it’s a fruity, tasty white wine, made from a local grape called Verdesse and vinified like a Bourgogne: perfect match with a white meat dish or a strong cheese. THE Grenoble wine to try!

GL: What do you think of New World wines: Californian, Australian etc? How do they compare to French wines in your opinion? (I’m British, so I’m neutral here!)

Daniel: Even though we have great wines in France – maybe some of the best ones – I have always been curious to discover wines from other countries when I was travelling a lot. There are some really nice wines from California, Australia, South Africa and Chile: they are often tastier than French wines; definitely worth trying. Talking about foreign wines, I am a real fan of Italian wines: they have unique local grapes, a perfect climate and some great wine-makers.

GL: What are some useful contacts and addresses for people wishing to set up a new business in Grenoble?

Daniel: I found the Chambre de Commerce is a very good source of contacts and training. Then your personal and professional network is key get additional contacts and free advice … and they are often your very important first customers!

See you soon for a wine tasting!
www.cavavin-grenoble-smh.fr

Breakfast at Le Valombré

Vickie Allen swaps the pistes of Alpe D’Huez for a weekend getaway at the chambre d’hôtes ‘Le Valombré’ in the Chartreuse. 

Squelching through the mud to avoid the frozen snow that last fell at Christmas, I was glad we hadn’t bothered to pack our ski stuff.  We watched over-dressed school children judder down the slushy nursery slope served by a single, antique drag-lift, their mittens dangling on cords from their wrists, googles perched on their helmets, zips undone. At our backs a southerly wind, disturbingly warm, swept through the trees and cooled as it hit the height of the Col de Porte, but not enough to reassure us that the promised snowfall was on its way, not at this height anyway. 

Situated at 1,326m there was still snow on the ground but as we descended into Chartreuse we drove back in time to find fallen leaves, bare trees and grassy clearings on the edge of the dense forest. It was autumn once again. 

Bare trees and clouds above Grenoble

We chose Saint-Pierre-de-Chartreuse for a quick mid-winter getaway as it’s so close to Grenoble (just 30-40 minutes by car) and we’d been enchanted by the forest when we visited for the day in the summer. 

As Brits who work in tourism, we’ve always been fascinated by the concept of a chambre d’hôtes. Having worked in a number of chalets and hotels, as well as running Mountain Experience, we weren’t sure if the idea of staying in someone’s house and being a guest at their table was tempting or not.  So we decided to check-in and see … 

Despite our English reserve our host Jean-Pierre was warm and accommodating from the moment we arrived at his home, Le Valombré. A barn conversion, the building is stunning with the self-contained guest quarters, that sleep up to ten people, on the first floor. The Boyfriend had chosen the Jade Room when booking from the photos of each colour-themed room on the website. We found it to be just as it looked online; light and comfortable with a huge bed and comfy armchair. Perfect for relaxation and privacy, but how would we find eating with a stranger? 

The Jade Room

Jean-Pierre shared the starter with us, but refrained from the main course and dessert. Leaving the table every now and then to refill the water and check the oven, his presence was comfortable and leisurely. He grasped his way through our faltering French, phrasing his questions to fill our awkward English silences with the utmost grace and ease. He chatted happily about his previous life in Paris, the conversion of the building and local visitor attractions. His recommendation to visit the church of St-Hugues-de-Chartruese to experience the modern art piqued our interest, and after a tasty four-course meal (with the obligatory local cheese-board) we made our way to bed.

We had agreed on a late breakfast at 9.30am and awoke to find the table laden with homemade preserves and yogurt. The mint and melon jam reminded me of sweet Moroccan tea and was a surprisingly refreshing accompaniment to warm croissants. The Boyfriend’s sweet tooth preferred Jean-Pierre’s strawberry and pineapple jam, while we both salivated over the oven-fresh brioche cake nestling under the lid of its red oven dish.  

Whistling his way through the morning routine of breakfast and cleaning, Jean-Pierre directed us to the church, whose art he described as incroyable.  

I have to admit a soft-spot for churches, especially those decorated with religious iconography. In France you’ll find many Catholic churches dripping in gold and ancient carvings so the modern strength of the abstract art at  St-Hugues took us by surprise. Red and gold dominates the wall hangings, contrasted by the blue stained glass windows of the transept. The artist Arcabas merges familiar biblical symbolism and stories with dark, passionate interpretations. The result is emotional and interactive; you can’t help but slip into the world of demons and angels. 

Inside St-Hugues

Slipping into Arcabas' world

The cooler colours of St-Hugues' transept

We wandered the rural village of St-Hughes and drove to the more commercial, resort of St-Pierre-de-Chartreuse. With the ski lifts closed, no snow and ESF instructors wandering the town in their uniform, it was easy to forget that this was mid-February. Most of the hotels, restaurants and shops were closed. Tourists were very thin on the ground and I wouldn’t have been surprised to see the odd tumbleweed blowing through the deserted grey carparks.  

The view from St-Pierre-de-Chartreuse

October conditions in mid-February...

Without the softening effect of snow, the scenery was raw, with mountains jutting out above the trees and narrow roads lining the winding base of the deep gorge. We spent the afternoon admiring the skeletal trees and vertical cliff faces, contrasted with gently sloping hills and forest clearings dotted with traditional houses and converted barns. As the rain started we returned to Le Valombré, anticipating another lovely meal, gentle conversation and a cosy sofa. 

For our first experience of a chambre d’hôtes, we could have asked nothing more of  Le Valombré. As the only guests, we were eased gently into sharing our meals and felt much more comfortable and relaxed than if we had stayed at a hotel. It was the perfect combination of privacy and relaxation, with the added benefit of our personal chef and knowledgeable host. And the lack of snow actually gave the break a slower pace, with no need to zoom around the slopes.  

So as we wandered into the forest at Trois Sommets, picking our way along the edge of the frozen path, I was happy to leave the kids to their ancient drag-lift and slush; breathing in the warm wind, pine needles and mulch … an autumn break in mid-February and a Valentine’s Day to remember. 

Vickie Allen shares her photos, films and thoughts on the reality of life in the mountains at Destination Oisans.

"Danse" by Daniel Champhanet at Ristretto Café

Françoise Lerond talks to artist Daniel Champhanet – currently exhibiting at the Ristretto Café in Grenoble – about painting expresso-style … with coffee. 

As a lover of innovation, I was really amazed at Daniel Champhanet’s beautiful scenes, made just by playing with coffee. I decided to talk to him to know more … 

Françoise Lerond: Daniel, could you tell us how the idea of painting with coffee came to your mind? 

Daniel Champhanet: The story starts at the meal time with friends, a coffee drop leaving a stain on the white colored paper tablecloth … What a beautiful color and great transparency! My imagination immediately started to wander around, connecting very old and somehow hidden ideas. I got it! I could catch hold of any moment with minimum material; a unique medium available anywhere in the world … The solution was obvious: Coffee! 

I fully agree with Lisa Yuskavage when she says that painting is not an aesthetic orthodoxy, and that creative freedom relies on one’s will to give things a try. 

Painting expresso, just for a short coffee break! 

Françoise: What does coffee recall for you?  

Daniel: Well, after being a medicine for a long time, it became the Devil’s drink (Qahwa), and then the first foodstuff used for the purposes of speculation. Nowadays, it is one of the most widespread drinks; but I now see it as an amazing artistic medium. It’s a simple but unique material, carrying a long and vibrant history. 

I also associate it with rich imagery, from its provenance to its roasting to the way millions of people share it every day, at breakfast, or simply at a social occasion. I could also talk about smell, recalling travels, lazing around at a coffee store or just reminiscing of childhood when I was first allowed to taste this magical beverage. I think coffee reminds each of us of something different and very personal! 

Françoise: What does it allow you to do more or better than other techniques? 

Daniel: It allows me to seize the moment of an emotion, of a face, of an object. It also gives an emotional transparency, most particularly when painting eyes. When mixing it with markers or pastels, I can obtain a fantastic intensity. 

Françoise: How do you manage to get such different nuances of colors with only one substance? 

Daniel: Everything lies in transparency, a bit like watercolor. Diluted with more or less water, you obtain various nuances. Results can also be different depending on the paper you’re using. 

Françoise: That’s really great! What an amazing result! Anything else you would like to add for Grenoble Life readers? 

Daniel: Yes, I’ve been exhibiting at the Ristretto Café  in Grenoble almost since its opening. Jocelyn Glorieux has nicely welcomed my painting in his shop, allowing a great alchemy between the location, coffee and the art. 

If you want to see the exhibition, you can visit the Ristretto Café: 23, Rue de la Poste – 38000 Grenoble. I will also be there to welcome you on Saturday, February the 5^th from 1 to 3pm. 

Françoise: Thank you Daniel. We hope to see some of our Grenoble Life readers there! If any of you would like to encourage Daniel in his work or simply know more, feel free to send him an e-mail: daniel.art.fr@gmail.com. You can also see some of his coffee artwork on Youtube.

photo: Vickie Allen

Vickie Allen reports on the snow – or lack of it – at Alpe d’Huez, and gives her tips for winter sports enthusiasts on how to predict the weather.

Sitting in our t-shirts looking across the green valley to the bare mountains behind, yesterday felt like April. In fact, last April the weather was far worse than it is now, with lots of snow falling late in the season.

Today as I look out of the window at the blue skies and the green trees it feels like Spring is already here. However, The Boyfriend has a different theory: winter hasn’t yet arrived.

photo: Vickie Allen

And he may be right. We’ve had a few big dumps of snow but nothing major and nothing really prolonged, which is what’s needed to provide a good strong base of snow. So maybe winter isn’t really here yet, maybe it’s on it’s way…

Our mountain weather is notoriously unpredictable and erratic. Last week we experienced all four seasons and after a week of sunshine the sort of temperatures we usually experience in May, the forecast is now predicting a week of clouds and snow.

photo: Vickie Allen

Just a few regular dustings really, around 10cm for the week, because the irony is that it’s going to be too cold to snow next week. The freeze level is due to drop from 3550m to 1850m today. By Thursday morning it will reach 0m and jiggle around up to 400m until Sunday.

photo: Vickie Allen

However, it’s not worth worrying about. Life here is lived determined by the weather and you have to be flexible to adapt to the whim of Mother Nature. This is one of the may reasons I love it, it stops me planning too far ahead! Forecasting here is supremely difficult and my interest in it has become purely theoretical. I’ve been closely watching the forecast for the past two years and love to watch the number but rarely do I base my life on them. They merely provide an idea of what may come to pass, but for life, I rely on these three methods for predicting the weather:

1: look to the south for storm clouds as this is where our weather originates
2: stick your head out of the window to test the temperatures and smell the air
3: layer-up no matter what the weather

photo: Vickie Allen

If you’re heading out on holiday soon then pack for all weathers, as you should no matter what time of year you visit the mountains. And if your trip is booked for later in the season then know that the weather might not be what you’re expecting, but you’ll have a great time anyway.

photo: Vickie Allen

PS: if you liked today’s photos, check out my Flickr page and entries into the Alpe Photo Contest.

Click on the link for more information about riding this winter in Alpe d’Huez or use the comments bow below to ask questions, I’d love to hear what you think!

Destination Oisans: Photos, films and thoughts on the reality of life in the mountains.

John Evans

Shonah Kennedy interviews the eponymous founder of John Evans Anglais, Grenoble’s long-standing language school.

Who is John Evans? This was the question chorused at a TESOL event my collegues and I attended when we had to announce where we worked. This questioning of a company with such a positive reputation and which has been in the area for over 30 years surprised me, and prompted me to ask John to do an interview for Grenoble Life. It only took six months, but I am very happy that he finally said “yes”!  So, I’m extremely pleased to present the below interview with John Evans, of John Evans Anglais.

Shonah: How and when did John Evans get started?

John Evans: Everything got started in 1981 when I decided to resign from the school where I’d been working for four years  and simply set up in business as an independent, freelance teacher. It was only in 1991 that I hired my first full time teacher – who is still with me – and new teachers have been steadily joining us ever since and we now have a team of ten teachers.

Shonah: Why did you decide to go into business for yourself, rather than work for one of the other numerous schools in the area?

John: As I’d been working in a school for four years, I just felt that I’d gone as far as I could go and that the time was right for a change. I don’t remember having had a burning desire to be an entrepreneur but I did like the idea of being independent, choosing  the way I worked and the teaching methods I used and not having to be answerable to anybody – apart from my customers. On top of that, running a small business has given an extra dimension to my professional life and – as much as I enjoy teaching – I like the business side involving managing a team of teachers, maintaining our relationships with our customers and even the administrative side.

Shonah: Over the years you have been in business, what major changes have you seen in the industry?

John: In my opinion, the biggest change of all has been in the shift from working with private individuals to working more and more with professionals and companies. No language school today can survive if they don’t have a solid customer base among local industry and if they don’t provide the solutions that the professionals need.

Teaching English 30 years ago was very general and language based whereas today most courses have to be customized and adapted to the specific needs of each trainee or group of trainees. The result for the teacher is that they also need to understand how companies work.  However, it does provide for greater job interest when you find yourself working with people from all fields of industry and in different company departments.

The other major change on the teaching side has obviously been the arrival of new ways of language learning thanks to new or improved technology – telephone lessons, e-learning, computer based exercises and all the possibilities offered by the internet with podcasts etc.

On the purely business side of things, there has been a shift in power within companies themselves and we now find ourselves dealing more and more with purchasing departments rather than training departments. Purchasers are looking to find one language provider for their nationwide needs and that is why I’m now a member of Canspeak – a nationwide association of independent language schools. As a result we can provide our customers with a global solution while, at the same time, retaining our own identity.

Shonah: Who are your main clients?

John: We have very different clients ranging from large, international customers such as Becton Dickinson, Soitec, Avery Dennison, Rolls Royce and Alcan to medium-sized companies like Petzl and EFD or scientific research Institutes and also small companies or start ups like Spartoo.

Shonah: How can somebody contact you?

John: First of all, it’s easy enough to find out about us by looking at our website and anybody can get straight through to me at the office 04 76 48 22 35.  Whether they’re looking for training courses or a teaching post.

Shonah: What are the future plans for John Evans?

John: There are no predefined plans as such. We just try to keep on doing what we do best and to keep on giving our customers the best possible service. Until now, this has always proved to be a successful recipe.

Shonah: Do you have any advice for teachers starting out in the industry, or those that have been in the industry for some years, but need some inspiration?

John: I think the first thing I would tell any young teacher is to “be yourself”. Every teacher has a different personality and teaching style but I think it’s important to cultivate that rather than try to fit into a mould or do things that you are not comfortable with. Listen to your trainees and try to deliver what they want and expect and ask them for regular feedback so that you can constantly “fine-tune” your courses. Be interested in your trainees and try to motivate them as much as possible. You mustn’t forget that some trainees are not always happy to be having language lessons and the day somebody tells you that you are the one who has made language learning an enjoyable experience for them – it’s the best compliment anyone can pay you.

One final thing – don’t be afraid to make mistakes! We’ve all made them and we’ll all continue to make them but as long as we learn from them, that’s all that matters. It’s also important to remember that it’s impossible to make all of your customers happy all of the time and that your own teaching style will suit some people but not others.

Shonah: Any anecdotes to tell after so many years here and doing what you do?

John: When I look back on 30 years of teaching I think that the most rewarding part of it has been meeting people of all ages and from all walks of life. I’ve worked with people between 15 and 85, from every walk of life and with extremely diverse backgrounds. Many of the people I have worked with have become close, personal friends and it has meant that teaching is not just “a job” but a very rewarding and fulfilling experience.

For all your administrative nightmares: Binders. Photo: nick findley

Grenoble Life editor James Dalrymple had to do a Validation des Acquis Professionnels et Personnels (VAPP) and survived to tell the tale. Here’s what happened and why.

Master your subject

For those wanting to one day take the competitive teaching exams or concours de l’enseignement (CAPES, Agrégation) to become a teacher for the French state system, you may be aware that things have changed. The government have scrapped the institutes (IUFMs) that provided teachers with practical training after these exams to gear them up for life in a classroom. Instead, it is now an obligation to have a Master’s degree in your chosen field before taking the concours, the second year of which orientates wanabee profs in two directions: a master’s in pedagogy (for those teachers taking the CAPES) and a master’s in research (for those wishing to take the agrég).

Setting aside the questionable French wisdom of abandoning practical teacher training for more theory – and thus a greater insistence on what you know as opposed to can you teach? – the shake-up has a number of consequences for anglophones intending to run the gauntlet. Firstly, you will require a master’s degree or equivalent in order to take the exams; secondly, the requirements for entering into these master’s programmes have become much stricter.

Getting a head start

When I arrived in Grenoble I knew several anglophones who had been able to enter directly into the second year of the Etudes Anglophones master’s programme given that they had a Bachelor’s degree in their native country and were seen as having an advantage over French students who had studied English literature to degree level in France. Therefore such people were able to obtain a master’s level (aka, Bac + 5) having completed what amounted to one term of classes evaluated via graded written work and oral presentations, and a dissertation on the research subject of their choice. One of my friends even wrote an article here about it. However, upon applying myself, I was told that a Bachelor’s was not sufficient to enter into Master 2, and my claims to know people who had done this were met with indifference. Something had changed, but no-one would explain what and why, nor was there information online to this explicit effect.

Formalising experience

At 32 years old with a job and a family, I was not able to commit to the full two years of the programme, especially frustrating since I knew people who had – with the same BA-level qualifications – gone directly into Master 2 with minimum fuss. There are two potential administrative procedures for people in my position: a Validation des Etudes and a Validation des Acquis Professionnels et Personnels (VAPP). As I hadn’t done enough additional post-degree study according to the new rules to claim the equivalence of the first year of the master’s, I failed in my efforts to pursue the former (lighter) route. Given I have worked (first in publishing and then in teaching) for around ten years, I had to opt for the VAPP. This also applies if you are over 28 or have interrupted your studies for more than three years (check for me on both counts!).

As far as I know, the VAPP doesn’t exist in anglophone countries but is a necessity in France where qualifications weigh so much more than work experience. It is not enough just to submit a CV. In France your experience has to be formally recognised by a commission and involves the supply of copious justificatifs (i.e. proof), explantory detail of all your acquired skills and knowledge and certified translations of your diplomas and certificates. In effect, the VAPP dossier becomes less of an application than a lengthy project that must be printed and bound six times.

Luckily for me I have a patient wife who was brought up in the French education system and has a black belt in admin. Without the help of such a person, you might as well forget about doing the VAPP. It is not just a question of being able to write French perfectly, but of knowing the specific terminology adopted within France’s idiosyncratic employment culture to explain one’s skills and knowledge. This requires hours of research in itself.  

Beware sworn translators

Worst of all, we had a dispute with a sworn translator, unbelievably British in origin herself, over grade equivalences. If you have a 2:1 Honours degree from a British university, this is the second highest mark you can receive after a First. Thus you would expect this to be translated as Mention Bien, the second highest level in France. Our translator, however, on whom we depended to certify the document as well as translate it, wanted to put Mention Assez Bien, effectively demoting my grade by one level. On this issue she would not budge despite our protestations. In the end we had to settle for her leaving the grade in English, and translating the rest, and hoping that the commission presiding over my dossier could understand the value of a 2:1.

Jumping through hoops

My dossier has been approved, but I can’t shake off the feeling that this was just a hoop thrown up for me to jump through – that the detail of my application was less important than my having tackled the time-consuming obstacle thrown in my path. I imagine that, in undertaking such an arduous task, I have proved to the commission who approve the VAPP that I am genuinely motivated. Wouldn’t a simple interview have sufficed ?

Feel free to use the comments box below to share similar experiences and advice or your own administrative nightmares.

Visuel de l’affiche de l’exposition « Mes semblables » © R. Oudinot 2010

Grenoble Life talked to photographer Remi Oudinot ahead of his exhibition Mes Semblables, which runs at Librairie Arthaud throughout October.

Grenoble Life: Can you explain the title of your exhibition, Mes Semblables?

Remi Oudinot : The title Mes Semblables came to my mind when trying to explain what motivates my photography practice: when and why do I trigger my camera shutter?

I do mostly street photography. And when out for “shooting”, I am on my own, a stranger in the crowd. This is especially true when I’m travelling abroad for professional or personal matters. I don’t look specifically for funny or odd situations, à la Doisneau, but rather I stop at simple human beings who, just like me, seem to be “strangers lost in the crowd”. They might be “locals”, but the expression I see on their face, the feelings their attitude conveys, separate them from the flow. 

I see them, and instantly want to capture the instant with the right angle, frame, light and colors (ok, I also do a bit of black & white !). We are alike, they are mes semblables. 

GL: Do you find many of your “semblables” in Grenoble?

Remi : I love Grenoble and its crowd. But Grenoble is not the best place for that. I believe that I need to feel like a stranger to identify my “subjects”, for the above mentioned reasons. Each time I’ve tried in Grenoble, I tend to capture anecdotes with little to no emotions. These pics are not “keepers” for me. Travelling is an easier (lazy?) way to please my retina.

GL: Many of your photos are the result of your travels: where have you been?

Remi : Mostly in the US. Mostly west coast, but I always try to find a plane stop to spend a couple days in New York on my way back.

I’ve been to Singapore too but wish I could experience Asia a bit deeper. I need to go to Japan!

Then Europe works for me as well, from Denmark to Turkey. A few hundreds kms away from Grenoble works too (I love the old downtown districts of Nice or Turin)

GL: Tell us about how you became interested in photography.

Remi : A 1983 Kodak Instamatic 77X: that was my birthday present when I turned nine. It produced little squared shots, very Polaroid-like. 

I’ve always been of the creative type, and I guess I’ve found photography to suit my creative aspirations. Like drawing, only easier and faster? Just kidding! But from then, I’ve never stopped shooting and really got serious about it seven or eight years ago, with the rise of affordable digital SLRs, matching my geeky addictions. Shooting, trying, improving, editing and shooting again. That really helped me a lot to find my very own way. Oddly enough, I’m now shooting film again, with a 1980-era Yashica Mat, and it brings additional fun that again boosts my appetite for image-making.

GL: What other exhibitions have you been involved in?

Remi : I exhibited a New York series last year at Gaia Store, a very nice travel-oriented bookstore in Grenoble. Then, I’ve been selected by the Maison de la Photographie et de l’Image, with a series on Le Voyage which was on display at the Ancien Musée de Peintures, place de Verdun. Lastly, the Luxembourg Chamber of Commerce exhibited some of my latest photos, as one of the “winning artists” for the European contest States of Creation.

The October expo at Librairie Arthaud will be my first, true, full-scale “solo” exhibition.

By the way, there’s a Facebook page for people willing to follow my updates. 

GL: What other galleries and artists in Grenoble can you recommend to our readers?

Remi : I like the work of Jean-Pierre Angei, Dominique Combarnous, Bruno Moyen and many other talented local professional or amateur photographers. There are not so many official places where photography can be enjoyed but I know that La Maison de la Photographie et de l’Image is struggling to make Grenoble a better place for that. For now, scrutinizing Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and the like is a good way to keep an eye on our local ecosystem of image makers.

GL: Where are you travelling next?

Remi : I’m just back from Amsterdam, thinking about Madagascar. But that might not happen in the next few weeks. I really need to set up a PayPal account to find sponsors !

GL: What projects for exhibitions and collaborations do you have for the future?

Remi : I will first focus on the upcoming expo. I’m just done with the editing and hope your readers will enjoy what I’m sharing. If they do, I’ll start to think about what’s next.

Anyone remember this? Photo: litherland

In August Grenoble Life editor James Dalrymple found himself with time to burn and decided to enrol in French classes at the CUEF. Here’s what he has to say.

Between finishing my job as a teacher in a private institute and beginning life in l’éducation nationale , I found myself the grateful recipient of more than one year’s untaken annual holiday. To get a taste of university life ahead of my new job on campus, and avoid spending all day in my dressing gown, I enrolled in a semi-intensive French class called Passerelle pour l’université française at the CUEF, one of the many rather inelegant departmental acronyms found there.

Centre Universitaire d’Etudes Françaises (CUEF) is part of Stendhal University and offers a variety of courses of different durations and tailored to different levels. According to the website the Passerelle “s’adresse aux étudiants désireux de s’inscrire dans une université française,“ which might lead you to the conclusion that it is less a language class than a series of lectures. In fact it is a fairly varied and pleasant FLE-style course comprising four hours of class time a day for two weeks, focused on improving a facility for formal expression and speaking.

Working on a rich range of materials including articles, video and audio reports, the course enables a broadening of vocab and a tightening of written style that suited me just fine. Longer summer courses exist, but the timing of the Passerelle was better for me. I should also add that this was not a class that prioritised free oral expression, although we had opportunity to debate the themes which arose in the materials (such as: the history of social housing in France, the future of urbanisation, surrogate motherhood).

The course was also a reminder of some of French education’s more idiosyncratic aspects: the insistence on summarizing and reducing articles from the press to their bare essentials, long after students had shown an understanding of the text. Agree with the efficacy of such an activity or not, it is a common exercise in French classrooms and worth familiarising yourself with if you are planning to study here. Personally, as someone who had learnt most of their shaky French à l’orale, I made masses of progress in terms of written structure, vocab and grammar.

The two weeks included access to a multimedia lab which was essentially just a computer room manned by a teacher-technician who could sometimes advise on specific online exercises to meet your needs. Furthermore, the fee included a guided visit to Musée Dauphinois which currently hosts an interesting temporary exhibition on Grenoble-born luminary Jacques de Vaucanson (1709–1782), one of the fathers of early robots: mechanical automatons that owed their design to greater understanding of the human anatomy.

Normally the course is aimed at B1 and B2 students, but I was pleasantly surprised to be told that I was pushing completion of C1 by the end of the course (and I was given a handy certificate to this effect; always useful in France), so there was a bit of a spread of levels in the group. This didn’t seem to matter too much, though, and it was great to be in one of those multi-national (albeit predominantly German) learning contexts where the common language is the one being studied.

If you have had good or bad experiences at the CUEF, please share them with us below. For further information on the CUEF and other French language courses in Grenoble, check this out.

Joseph Schott anticipating life in Grenoble

Joseph Schott has come from the USA, via Japan, to do an MBA at the Grenoble Graduate School of Business. We will be following him ‘From Admission to Graduation’ as he blogs on life and learning in the Capital of the Alps.

Hello, my name is Joseph Schott. I’ll be starting at the Grenoble Graduate School of Business as an MBA student in September. I’m originally from the United States, but I spent the last four years in Japan with the JET Programme. While I was there, I taught English as a foreign language, did some translation and interpretation, and led a small non-profit that performs some support functions for the JET Programme.

While the cities in Japan are beautiful and convenient, the whole country is also full of mountains. It is a great place to be if you like hiking or rock climbing. It was hard to leave! I originally studied social sciences in the US, but working in Japan with people from around the world made me want to get more involved in international business. So after considering the great location of GGSB, (and drooling over pictures of French cheese) I put my interests together and applied at Grenoble.

I’ve been asked to write about my hopes and fears, as well as what I’m doing to prepare for my new life in Grenoble. I’ll start with the juicy bit and go right into my fears. It goes without saying that moving to a new country is a very complicated process, and a lot of the time I’m just glancing at my calendar, hoping that nothing goes wrong. However, my biggest worry about coming to Grenoble is the language. I only just started studying French a few weeks ago, and I’m an absolute beginner.

I’ve been told that Grenoble has a very large and vibrant international community, and from what I’ve seen on this blog, the range of people you can meet is one of the city’s highlights. At the same time, I’m not under any illusion that I’ll be having an easy time without speaking any French! In Japan, I was usually the one helping other people navigate bureaucracy and solve communication problems, but in Grenoble I’ll be back to being a beginner. On the other hand, I’m excited to pick up a third language to use in business and for making new friends. And for that I’m going to need to speak a lot more French!

I’ve found lots of French language resources and language tapes, and I’ve been carrying my beloved Anki around with me everywhere. If you’ve never heard of Anki or other similar tools (they are usually called spaced repetition systems or SRS), I’d definitely recommend checking one out. The idea is that you can store huge amounts of small facts as virtual flashcards, and the program will take care of scheduling which cards you review. So for example, you might eventually have 3,000 vocabulary words, and Anki will bring up about 100 each day. It can make sure that difficult phrases and words are brought back frequently, and things that you’ve already memorized are brought up sparingly. It works from my mobile, and I use it while I’m on the train, waiting in a line, or when a conversation is waning. Best of all it’s open source.

I’ve also been brushing up on my math and finance, and reading some books to get ready to go back to school. I’m currently reading a book on job hunting and just finished an interesting book on Google’s business model and path to success. I’ve also subscribed to a few rss feeds from business blogs. I’ve seen some interesting articles on www.voxeu.org, www.deadlysins.info/wordpress, blogs.hbr.org, as well as many others. Reading these keeps me excited for the intensive studying that will start in September. I also watch many of the presentations from the TED Conference, which are very short, but center on global issues and very inspiring.

However, wrapping up my life in Japan and saying farewell to everyone I’ve met has been the most difficult part of my preparation for Grenoble. Changing location so often, especially between countries, gives you a chance to meet lots of interesting people, and with social networking services like facebook, mixi, and so on, it is easier than ever to stay connected. At the same time though, these applications can make it easy to give yourself the illusion of being connected and ignore the real value of the relationships you’ve made. Before moving my focus to Grenoble, one of my biggest tasks has been to properly say goodbye to all of the amazing people I met in Japan.

As I finish these preparations and the start of classes draws closer and closer, I find myself feeling more and more excited each day. I can’t wait to meet the other members of my class and get started on my new life. I’m also looking forward to checking out the climbing gym near the school, relaxing at one of the cafés around the city, and trying out the hiking in the three surrounding mountain ranges.

I first got involved in climbing in Japan, where it is just starting to really become popular. Actually, people there use some French terms as loan words too, such as gaston (ガストン). I did mostly bouldering, so I’m excited to learn more about top-roping and outside routes, which I’ve heard are more popular in France. The nearby mountains look they’ll be great for hiking, and maybe I can even spot a Dahu!

Essential Questions. Photo: banlon1964

Grenoble Life editor James Dalrymple shares five pearls of wisdom gleaned from teaching English to professionals in the city.

This month presents a watershed moment for me professionally as I end my stint as a teacher-trainer – of mostly professional adults – at a private institute and prepare for my first taste of l’éducation nationale française. Having obtained a post on campus as a lecteur, I will complete the job that has defined my experience in France since my arrival, and take a step into the unknown.

Some might say that the move from formateur to lecteur will be a case of “out of the frying pan and into the fire,” but, as a cathartic act of drawing a line under my experience, I have compiled a list of five pearls of sagesse concerning teaching professional English in France.

1. Everybody speaks English now, right?

Wrong. Even if English has gone global, there will be times when you are confronted with students who have apparently never spoken it before, let alone knowingly seen or heard it. Even in cosmopolitan Grenoble, expect to have to teach some adults who are closer to vrais than faux debutants.

Why should everyone speak English? I have had the unenviable task of trying to teach people who had neither significant professional need to speak the language, nor a lifelong burning passion to begin doing so. At one time I had to manage a contract with a medium-size manufacturer, at which all the shop floor operators were obliged to have English training. For many of these mostly middle aged men (and some women) from the shop floor, whose modest education was a distant memory, the effort spent in learning English vastly outweighed the reward.

No doubt these same men could acquire certain technical skills faster than I ever could, yet English remained alien and abstract despite many hours in contact with it. During my time with these people, I am ashamed to admit that I may have learnt more from them (about industry, about how things are made) than they learnt from me.

Most English teachers in the private sector will probably relate to my feeling that many student-trainees have been permanently damaged by a school approach to language learning that was, for many, didactic and dogmatic rather than communicative or intuitive. It is often difficult to get the French to let go of the idea of grammar as language’s evil twin, and that speaking a language is akin to navigating a minefield of punishable mistakes.

2. « On est nuls en Anglais en France »

Despite what I said in observation one, many French people speak excellent English. Countless times I have met students who, upon eloquently introducing themselves, feel the need to add the little disclaimer that their English is terrible and how embarrassed they are to speak it. Normally I point of out the window at this moment and ask them which country they live in, where they grew up, and why on earth they are not prouder to be able to express themselves in another language, even if only a little.

Maybe it says something about the French attitude to their own language that they would prefer not to speak another if they can’t speak it beautifully. Compared to Britain though, where learning foreign languages has been in serious decline since a law was passed making it no longer mandatory after the age of 14, the French are a nation of linguists.

3. Time = results

Not necessarily. Interest and enthusiasm for the language and the culture remain paramount. Too many people are sent for English training as if sent to learn any other professional skill. I have often been confronted by a belief that time spent in the classroom will automatically be rewarded with improved TOEIC scores, for example. Professional need is no substitute for passion for the subject, and the fact that many adults in France come to training out of obligation rather than choice engenders a passive attitude to learning which is often an obstacle to meaningful progress.

4. I want to speak Business English

Unfortunately for teachers, human resources and training managers – not all known for their broad knowledge of language pedagogy – often insist upon certain thématiques for the ESL classroom. In my opinion there is too much interference from companies who want to impose skills-based English upon their employees. However, you can’t run before you can walk, and it is very frustrating being told to teach students how to participate in a meeting in English, or speak on the telephone, for example, without having mastered the basics.

5. Grenoble needs an International House

Grenoble has an enormous market for English teaching, but no focal point to promote excellence or provide training for its teachers. For us long-term formateurs, we need to do more to share our ideas and improve standards. Hard-working teachers also need to feel that their efforts be rewarded with the possibility of professional development, whereas often the door to such progress seems permanently closed. As far as I know there is currently nowhere to do the CELTA in Grenoble – an internationally recognised English teaching certificate that does not hold nearly as much weight as it should in France – although Marianne Reynaud organises TESOL-affiliated seminars.

Given the size of the English teaching sector in Grenoble, there should be an innovative and internationally-accredited institute like International House where teachers can be trained and learn to train others. Such an institute could act as a catalyst for improving standards and, by bringing teachers together, raising the morale and pride among the ESL workforce.

Graines de Polyglottes

Grenoble Life editor James Dalrymple chatted to Elisabeth Malandrino, Directrice at Graines de Polyglottes, a new language centre for children in the city.

Grenoble Life: What do you do at Graines de Polyglottes?

Elisabeth Malandrino: Graines de Polyglottes is a language center that welcomes children from 3 to 11 years for them to learn foreign languages: English, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian.

In small groups of 5 up to 8 children organized by age and level, children come one hour per week. 

GL: How, when and why did get involved?

Elisabeth: Graines de Polyglottes was born naturally - coming myself from a multicultural family, the idea of speaking several languages has emerged very early.

My mother was born in Spain, my father was born in Italy, one of my sisters lives in the United States, I have a American nephew and a German one.

At my daughter’s birth, I thought that other parents would also like their own children to learn other languages.  Graines de Polyglottes was then born!

It’s a project which required several years of preparation and we welcomed our first students in September 2010.

GL: What is the Graines de Polyglottes philosophy and method?

Elisabeth: Our philosophy rests on the pleasure of learning through play.

In a child-friendly environment, children are happy to come and share these moments with their teachers and other children.

They learn without effort, having fun and, of course, they repeat words.

For this we use an active, structured and playful method.

We aim at awakening auditory, visual and gestural language for the youngest (3-6 years) by mobilizing all the sensory abilities of children. We use puppets, rhymes, songs, drawings …

For older children (7-11 years), we develop the understanding and expression, both oral and written skills by role playing, the media …

GL: What is the typical profile of the parents of children at Graines de Polyglottes?

Elisabeth: We have many different cases:

- French families, who understand the importance of foreign languages and want to give their child this advantage.

- Mixed families who speak one or more languages at home and want to improve achievement.

- Families coming back from abroad to France who want their children to continue speaking and writing their new language.

GL: What is the typical profile of a teacher at Graines de Polyglottes?

Elisabeth: The teaching team consists of language teachers with a proven track of several years of teaching experience with young children.

Their knowledge of the French educational system and the one of their countries of origin is a valuable asset in developing programs.

Our teachers bring their professionalism and enthusiasm in the centre.

GL: What is the ideal age for children to start learning a second language?

Elisabeth: The sooner the better, babies are able to distinguish the sounds of all languages.

A baby’s mother and entourage will make him or her familiar with the phonemes of the language spoken within the family and little by little, he will keep only the sounds that are part of that language.

That’s why the more a young child hears different languages, the more he/she retains more language skills, both for listening and speaking.

At Graines de Polyglottes, we welcome children from kindergarten age for practical reasons.

GL:  Why have you set up a Graines de Polyglottes particulary in Grenoble?

Elisabeth: First, for personal reasons because Grenoble is my hometown.

Then, for reasons peculiar to the city, Grenoble became multicultural and cosmopolitan. Many families around the world come to live for a year or more for professional reasons.

Increasingly, we hear other languages in the street.

I think Graines de Polyglottes responds to the requests of many parents.

GL: Will you have any recruitment opportunitues? What are the advantages of working at Graines de Polyglottes?

Elisabeth: We recruit motivated graduate teachers with experience of teaching young children.

We work in an atmosphere where everyone works together and exchange between cultures takes place naturally.

GL: How can people contact you?

Elisabeth: You can contact us by phone 04.76.87.37.01 or by email:  contact@grainesdepolyglottes.fr.

For more information, see the website www.grainesdepolyglottes.fr

To the Bastille by bubble

Grenoble Life’s Christina Rebuffet-Broadus shuns the mass exodus for the beaches to check out guided tours of her adopted home town. Here’s what she found out.

The French have flocked south for their yearly dose of Mediterrannean sun, leaving the city streets all but deserted. The smaller shops have pulled down their iron curtains with fermé pour congés annuels hastily taped to the facade before migrating for the summer. Every now and then, you catch a group of tourists (without skis this time) wandering around the city.

Rather than crowd yet another beach and up the chances of getting skin cancer, city-tethered locals and French-challenged tourists may want to explore Grenoble. The Tourism Office operates a few regular English-language tours during the summer. Admit it – getting cozy with the city is way more fun than trying to squeeze onto a beach with half of the French population. Afterward, you can impress friends and family with your expertise in Grenobology.

I’m a big fan of being a tourist in your own city. Don’t take the attractions for granted—get out and do them! Start, for example, with the Tourism Office’s audioguided tour of the city center. If you’ve lived here long enough, you may already know when Cularo’s rampart was built. Maybe you can pinpoint where Napoleon marched into Grenoble on his way to power-center Paris. But you’ve probably never eavesdropped on those events as they happened.

The audioguides go beyond stringing dates, places, and names together like a 1850s history book. In about an hour-and-a-half visit through the city center, the history of Grenoble speaks to you, literally. Listen in as two tourists argue if it’s Place du Trib’ or Place St. André and let the abbot of St. Hugues church tell you what Place Notre Dame used to be.

I thought I had schooled myself well in Grenoble history and still learned a few new things about my adopted hometown. Plus, with all the other tourists walking around, I didn’t stick out so much with my map, headphones, and a remote-control-looking device hanging around my neck. When I opted to listen to some Liszt, I could peacefully contemplate the facade of the hotel where he stayed. 

If you prefer flesh and blood to plastic and LCD screens, the Tourism Office also hosts two regular guided visits in English: the Bastille and the city center. I tried the Bastille tour, just because it includes a ride in the Bubbles (honestly, how many of you still haven’t taken the Bubbles?). Little did I know, the Bastille would storm me although I’ve been regularly climbing its slopes since I’ve lived here.

To begin the tour, I joined Steve, my guide in the Jardin de Ville for a short lesson on Lesdiguières and why he built the first fortifications in the 16th century. You will have to take the tour yourself to find out, but here’s a hint: If he could do it, so could anyone else, which was not good for Grenoble’s security (Hint for the hint: “it” doesn’t mean building the Bastille).

We floated to the top of the site and began by reading Grenoble from above. The roofs below told the history of the city through color. The red roofs represented the oldest parts of Grenoble from the middle ages. Lesdiguières left his mark with blue slate roofs. More recent architectural history was written in black and white. 

The history of Grenoble is written on the rooftops

With a guide, you can visit parts of the Bastille usually closed to the public. We explored the upper blockhouses where soldiers lived and canons once boomed. The vaulted ceilings gave the living quarters the false feeling of an early medieval chapel but the sentinels probably didn’t pray much. They never came under fire. Construction of the Bastille ended in 1845 and Grenoble could feel fully protected from potential Savoyard invasions. Then Savoie became French in 1860 and the Bastille had no one to guard Grenoble from.

As dutiful tourists, Steve and I attacked the dry moat, no man’s land, and we tunneled through Mandrin’s grottoes. All of these parts are open to the public, but with a guide, they become more than a place for a panoramic picnic or holes in the mountainside.

To understand just how ingenious the Bastille’s layout is, let the guide explain it to you on site. You will literally see how the Bastille functioned as a fort. As Steve pieced the elements together, I understood how well Haxo had planned the Bastille. He probably never even knew he was creating the star of Grenoble. 

Audioguides are available for rent at the Grenoble Tourism Office for 5€. For an extra euro, you can have a second set of headphones so that two people can listen to a single device.

The Bastille visit costs 9.50€ and includes a round trip on the Bubbles.

The city center visit costs 6.50€.

You can sign up for the city center or Bastille visit at the Tourism Office or at their summer information booth at the foot of the Bubbles. The city center visit takes place at 2:30 pm and the Bastille visit starts at 4:30 pm, every day except Sunday.

Montessori school shelves with toys. Photo: 3neus

In a three-part blog Camille Bromley describes a day in the life of a teacher at the Montessori International School of Grenoble. Read part I.

7:38 am

Bus stop, Place Verdun.  As the number 31 bus to Meylan: Maupertius approaches I’m hastily devouring the remaining third of my Big Chocolate, freshly purchased for 1 euro from Sandwich House located behind the Maison de Tourisme tram stop, outgoing side. Ordinarily the Big Chocolates from this Sandwich House are not especially good pain au chocolat, but they’re easily the size of two regular pain au chocolat, a good bargain at 1 euro (the American in me is always a sucker for bargains), and in the morning when they’re warm they’re still pretty darn tasty.

The Big Chocolate is the ritual first step in my once-weekly workday as an English teacher at Montessori International Primary School in Meylan, as this is the only day in the week I exit the house early enough to catch one while still warm. The other days of the week I work as an English assistant in public primary schools.

Teaching at Montessori International School is not like teaching in French public school.  It’s vastly different, in fact.  If you’re not familiar with what’s called the Montessori Method, I’ll briefly explain: The Montessori Method of children’s education was originally developed in the early 20th century by an Italian educator named Maria Montessori. It’s an alternative approach to schooling, encouraging a child’s individual self-directed learning using the support of materials and teacher observation. 

From what I understand, while many schools worldwide function under the heading of Montessori School there are no defined guidelines for the specific practical application of this education system. However, the general idea is that children learn best when they follow their natural instincts and interests. In other words, it’s self-study for kids; less academically-put, the kids do what they feel like.

This “do-what-you-feel-like” philosophy is most decidedly not the norm in French public schools, from what I’ve seen in my year’s experience there, the essential part of a teacher’s oral utterances consisting of phrases such as, non, tu n’as pas le droit!; vous levez la doigt pour avoir la parole!; TAISEZ-VOUS! [yelled shockingly loud]; vous êtes insupportables aujourd’hui! [tone of resignation and accompanying sigh]; and finally the much-loved Bravo!, with exaggerated sarcasm. Thus, Montessori International reputedly offers an alternative to parents who prefer their kids to receive more positive encouragement than negative during the first 6–9 years of their educational development.

However, I haven’t given an entirely clear picture of the Montessori International School in Meylan. This school is foremost an international school, with instruction provided in French and English. I am the English-instruction teacher (on Mondays anyways), and a woman with a confounding last name, Martine Grzelak, functions as school director and French-instruction teacher. 

We take care of the primary-age children, age 6–12. The children in this group, about 25 of them, are mostly Francophone, with a solid group of Anglophones and couple French-English bilingual kids. There is another, separate class of students at the school, the pre-school age group (ages 3–6), also Francophone or Anglophone or both, headed by Emilie Ballivy. The pre-schoolers are called Les petits castors, which gives an accurate impression of their work ethic and focused accomplishment under the guidance of Ms. Ballivy.

The school makes use of an impressive collection of Montessori materials and supplies, and the curriculum is organized around the French National Education program, so that children are expected to cover a similar material to public school students. More on the Montessori Method as the day progresses.

Part II

Part III

Paul Waters at The Cake Shop

Grenoble Life meets Paul Waters, The Cake Shop‘s young British pâtissier, to ask him about leaving the UK to make British and American style cakes in France.

Grenoble Life: What’s your job at The Cake Shop?

Paul Waters: My job is a mixture of things – with there only being two other people that work at The Cake Shop and so many things to do the work gets shared around. I mainly design and create the cakes but I also help out in the shop front stocking the shelves and serving clients.

I also get to make the cupcakes and other tasty goodies that you see on display when you come to the store, as well as teaching people my skills and helping to organise events. But I mainly stick to designing and creating cakes. If it’s been made with sugar paste nine times out of 10 it will have been made by me. I literally eat and breathe sugar paste – it’s my life, and a tasty one at that!

GL: How were you recruited and where did you train? 

Paul: I trained at The National Bakery School at South Bank University in London. I intended to do a two-year course there but, due to government funding, it was cut to one year. Nevertheless I left with my Diploma in craft studies. I studied pretty much everything from bread to chocolate.

It was my mother who found the job at The Cake Shop. She was flicking through my Cake magazine when she saw there was a job going for a store in France. At the time I was happily making a mess in the kitchen making something tasty when she approached me with it. I was highly interested and desperate for an adventure, not thinking I would get anywhere because at the time I was only 16 and just starting college, although I have been baking and creating cakes for people since I was eight. But my parents assured me to go for it I distinctly remember them saying “if it doesn’t go anywhere it’s all good experience.”

After sending the email, the following day I received a phone call from the owner, Ariane Zenker, who gave me a mini-interview on the phone. After the call ended I was so excited, my imagination went into overtime as I began to dream of what could happen next. After lots of talk and conversation via email I arranged to go out and see her in February during half term with my mother. After that things just took off and one thing spiralled into another.

GL: Tell us a little bit about your background?

Paul: Well, I grew up in an area called Essex just outside of London, when I was about 11 my parents sold the house brought a smaller one and another one in the south of France. That sparked my love for France and from then on it has been a never-ending love affair, holidays spent with a wall paper scraper in one hand and a paint brush in the other, whilst trying to figure out what ‘plaster’ is in French.

GL: Why did you decide to move to France?

Paul: Well the fact my parents already have a holiday home in the south and they plan to move there permently next year was a big deciding factor. I knew what to expect from my time spent there I had a basic understanding of French life and language. There have also been a lot of problems in my family, a lot of upset; I wanted to get it away from it all as well. The English weather also leaves a lot to be desired.

GL: How have you adapted to life in France?

Paul: I have adapted very well mainly because of my parents having their holiday home in the south but also, because I was so desperate to leave the UK to see the world, determination has kept me going. My advice to anyone moving to this country is to relax, clear your mind and embrace the culture. Do not make comparisons with your home town don’t try to live your life like you normally do, change it to fit the environment.

When I first moved here I was just 17 a lot of people never took me very seriously at first, not to mention the fact that my parents had to sign everything for me as I had no signing power! I couldn’t even take out a phone contract or internet as a result but now at the age of 18 things are a lot better.

I also find the French attitude to being free/open and expressing your self very strange. Paris is a place of art, fashion, the weird, the wonderful, and is filled with some of the most beautiful things. Yet when you come to express yourself through fashion and art you raise a lot of eyebrows and get some very strange looks. It seems the rest of France has no desire to follow in the shadow of Paris; if this has anything to do with French people disliking the Parisians I have yet to find out. 

GL: Tell us about a typical day at The Cake Shop?

Paul: Well I usually arrive at 11:00, Ariane will brief me in on the plan for the day, she will say something along the lines of; “you have that wedding cake to start and the cookie class at 3:00”, “I also got an email from the woman that you did the Princess Cake for, she was very happy”. Then I make a start on my jobs for the day. I could have a long list of cakes to decorate or, if a delivery has just arrived from the UK, it needs unpacking, pricing and being put on display.

I may also get the chance to develop new products or create new classes. I may be teaching people in the evening or doing things on the computer. Every day is completely different – you never quite know what obstacles you will need to overcome or what you are doing. I usually finish about eight in the evening after shutting up the store for the night.

GL: What’s the best thing about your job?

Paul: I love what I do and so many people don’t get the chance nowadays to do what they love. The best thing about my job is it’s so different, I am never bored, never creating the same cake twice, or sat around with nothing do. Working at The Cake Shop can be fun, crazy, hectic and stressful but it’s all worth it in the end.

GL: What are some of the more difficult experiences you have had working at the cake shop?

Paul: Working at The Cake Shop can be very difficult at times – when you have a lot of work to do the pressure is on to meet your deadlines. When things go wrong everything seems to go wrong at once but, because of the nature of my job, some of my worst experiences are also some of my best. For example, you have a cake rapidly melting in the heat and it’s causing the icing to stretch and expand at the sides, you have to act quickly and work out why it went wrong and how to stop it. I will then learn from that and move on, turning it into a good experience.

GL: What do you love about Grenoble?

Paul: I love the way Grenoble is so small yet has lots of big name stores here and nice shops, it gives it a city feel but at heart it has the community of a town. It’s very hard to explain but it makes it a very nice place to be, surrounded by all the mountains. I also love Grenoble’s cosmopolitan feel, the mix of all different nationalities and the students.

GL: What are your plans for the future?

Paul: I would love to take The Cake Shop to Paris; I would love to get back to the buzz of the city, its pulse runs through my blood. I would definitely consider doing my own business in Paris – what would be really good is if I could set up a company in France that manufactures or imports all the products that you can’t get here, all the kinds of things we sell in The Cake Shop. That way people like Ariane wouldn’t be my competitor but my more like a colleague as I would be helping her keep her shop stocked with my products.

Part III

12:00 pm

Lunchtime. The microwave cart is wheeled in, desks are cleared, chairs fetched. The students eat in the classroom. The children are expected to be settled quietly in their chairs, ask to go wash their hands, and then ask to get their lunchboxes before they are allowed to eat. Meanwhile, the child in charge of setting the table this week goes to get the silverware and dishes.   

12:30 pm

Everyone is finally sitting and has more or less the complete tableware set in front of them: plate, fork, knife, little yogurt spoon, and plastic cup (Martine’s cabinet has slowly but surely been rid of all the glassware glasses, not intentionally).

The table setting procedure always takes much longer than is logically necessary, probably because the child assigned to set the table is for some reason 90% of the time the same small boy, who due to his diminutive size and severely ADD nature seems the absolute worst person in the room to give the task of distributing various separate pieces of cutlery to students sitting in disorganized clumps around the big room, not to mention that when you see him trying to lug the heavy glass water pitchers around to each table you get the sinking sense of futility of watching someone trying very hard to complete a Sisyphean task. Half the pitcher will have been emptied on the floor by the time he gets to the table, and he’ll be sent to get more in five minutes.

I send the children in groups of two or three to the cloakroom to get their lunchboxes. I imagine that you can tell a lot about the home life of individual children from their lunchboxes. A lot of the older children seem to have the freedom to creatively fashion their own concept of a meal; there’s a group of three girls (who aggressively defy the assertion that social cliques don’t exist in small schools) that bring their lunches in family-style portions to share with each other: a bag of Lay’s potato chips, a Tupperware box of pasta and sauce, an entire sleeve of Speculoos cookies.

The Anglophone children belong to a different breed of household, one that clearly holds in contempt the irresponsible consumption of low nutrient-to-calorie ratio foods and environmentally unfriendly packaging. S—, a six-year-old with extraordinary feminine style (how a child of that age is able to exude such class is beyond me), declares matter-of-factly that she hates ice cream and cake. Her treat of choice is the green pressed seaweed paper that sushi rolls come wrapped in — in French it’s translated as algae, which expresses better, I think, the total bizarreness of a six-year-old reveling in the taste of a seaweed wrap (imagine an apple cheeked little girl saying with a charming missing-front-tooth smile, “My favorite food is algae”).  

1:15 pm

The kids are fairly hopping to get outside after a full morning of being together in one room. They go into the cloakroom to remove their slippers and put on their outside shoes, most of which resemble work boots or what English people call “wellies” rather than the slick bright white Pumas or the metallically shiny girl-sized heels (!) public school children wear. This is because the playground provided for amusement and the venting of various child frustrations during the lunch recess is not actually a playground, it’s an empty field behind the Montessori school building accessible only by a quick jump across a ditch (a wide step for you or me, a brief air-bound thrill for the 11-year-olds, and an unbreachable chasm for the 3-year-olds, who nevertheless enjoy the jump immensely so long as you’re holding their hand.

Supervising, I can’t help thinking that innovative playground developers, with their tangle of curved colored bars and knotted rope systems, are entirely missing the point — the kids have more fun rolling around in the grass and throwing rocks at trees than with any preconstructed equipment education authorities can buy. I’m reminded how innocent and sweet children are at heart when I hear G— and S— playing a sort of tag-zombie game which seems to consist of yelling “I’m going to suck your brain!” and attempting to grab the skull of another player.

2:00 pm

Emilie and I file the children back into school, past the company workers in button up shirts and pencil skirts taking their smoke break. Monday afternoon is devoted to art class and Spanish class, and the children are sent in small groups to participate in those activities. Otherwise, the students can continue the projects of the morning. The students complete impressive individual projects throughout the year that don’t sacrifice depth or quality for the lack of collaborators.

S— is working on a postcard project; she’s contacting friends and acquaintances across the U.S., asking them to send her postcards at the Montessori school address, teaching her about their town or state. She’s gathered a large number of postcards and will organize them into a visual presentation. O— has completed a project about the state of Israel, its history, people, and culture, and the poster is hanging on the classroom wall.

One of the goals of the Montessori school is to effectively link all subjects together in the child’s mind; to create a truly interdisciplinary understanding of the world. This objective makes for very creative project ideas, and the results are evident in the variety of student-made artwork and presentations on display around the school.

3:30 pm

The school day is over, but many students will stay for the next one to two hours, playing the gymnasium or participating in an activity Martine or Emilie has organized. I, however, say my rounds of “See you next week” and am out the door.

The next day I’ll be at one of the public primary schools in Grenoble. Not being an education expert, I’m not going to offer my judgment of the effectiveness of the education system in public schools compared to the Montessori approach. The purposes and needs of the two school systems are vastly different and require different methods of teaching and classroom management. Montessori schools may give more individual attention, but they also provide a lot less guidance and structure. This may or may not work well, depending on the character of each individual child. One thing I do know, however, is that I’ll be doing a lot more yelling in my public school.

Part I

Part II

For more information:
http://www.montessori-grenoble.com/UK/school-montessori-grenoble.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montessori

Part II

8:12 am

Terminus on the number 31 bus line. The bus halts in front of a grouping of new, enterprise-y looking buildings with big reflective glass windows framed in a shade of blue that suggests innovation and forward-thinking. The school is rather unexpectedly housed in one of these buildings, towards the back of the complex, sharing quarters with some kind of company that requires men and women in business attire to enter and exit through the same doors as the free-spirited, frequently-in-high-speed-motion Montessori kids.

The school is essentially three large rooms, the primary schoolroom, the pre-school room, and the gym, which is carpeted and doubles as an art studio and Spanish nook. There is also Martine’s office, a nap room for the preschoolers, a storage room, and a cloakroom where the children hang their coats, bags, and change their shoes into indoor shoes. They are only allowed to wear slippers inside the school, as it is carpeted. This reminds me of Japanese schools, except that here the children are allowed to bring their own slippers. In Japan the slippers are part of the uniforms and must be regulation color and design.

8:45 am

The kids wander in the room one by one and are by this time more or less all present. After some general comments and reminders, Martine starts the weekly routine of designating “responsibilities” onto each child. This is performed by use of a chart listing cleaning tasks to be completed each day and a small canvas sack containing the names of each child on Velcro tabs.

It took me a few months to figure out that the responsibility entitled Muffin referred to the class hamster. Insisting that the responsibilities be assigned by a random pull from the bag, Martine cheats openly on her own rule by fishing for names that she believes merit a particular nasty chore this week. The kids either suffer tremendously from the injustice of this favoritism or get a kick out of it, depending on how you choose to interpret the situation.

The responsibilities I find to be an ingenious system for ensuring an attitude of collective care and respect from all the students towards the cleaning and upkeep of the school room and materials. By being allowed to choose, in a fashion, what chore they do each week the child is given some autonomy and feels like she’s making a voluntary decision to contribute. This is probably a distinctive Montessori touch. Japanese schoolchildren also clean the school as part of their daily duties, although there they are responsible for the bathrooms as well, which I remain convinced is a mistake (imagine how what kind of clean job a second-grader might do on a bathroom — then repeat that every day for the whole year).

8:52 am

Work time. The children are either broken up into groups or sent to a desk to work individually. All the primary school kids, from 6 to 12, work in the same room, some in groups and some independently, and they pursue different activities. Martine keeps an eye on all of them and remains aware of how they’re doing and what progress they’re making, a remarkable feat for about 15 different students and different levels.

There are no set subject periods or age groups. The children have more or less the choice to work on one activity the entire morning or change subjects freely. There’s no morning recess, although there is a snack, which the children are expected to provide, following a rotation schedule. If the children tire of one activity and want to do some less-strenuous but still constructive activity such as reading, it is permitted within reason.

I take the group of English speakers. There are two first grade girls, a third grader, a fifth grader, and sometimes a first grade boy. We either do a language-arts activity all together, harder versions adapted for the third and fifth graders, or I split them up to work in pairs or alone. It’s my choice based on what we’re doing that day and how well the children are working together. When the English speakers take breaks to work on another subject, I choose a group of French children to do an English language lesson.

11:00 am

With Martine in the room, the classroom functions smoothly. With some notable exceptions, the children work quietly, although their rate of productivity is subject to debate. Clearly, some children are more ideal Montessori students than others. A group of three boys writes a bilingual dialogue together concerning an inept motorist and a driving instructor for their upcoming play. Another boy does French grammar exercises on the computer. A girl visualizes multiplication with wooden beads and a counting board.

Meanwhile, little G— sulks at his desk, complaining that his work is “too hard” and he doesn’t “understand nuffing,” and I— doodles on the margins of his essay and gazes out the window. I remind I— to get back to his work and Martine appears over G—‘s shoulder to investigate the veracity of his claim.

Part I

Part III

Guida Bulba: Corps & Voix

Grenoble Life’s Shonah Kennedy meets Guida Bulha of Corps et Voix, a trainer and consultant in oral communication.

As a teacher I have the privilege to meet a vast array of people.  I am constantly amazed, entertained and, more often than not, pleasantly surprised.  One of the people I had the pleasure of meeting was Guida Bulha of Corps et Voix.  Below Guida explains what she does, how she does it and what benefit it could be for you.

Shonah: How do you describe what you do?

Guida Bulha: Well, I am a trainer and a consultant in the oral communication area – working the body and the voice.

Shonah: What does the process do for people?

Guida: This helps people to speak with greater confidence and conviction, and communicate more effectively in both business and social environments.

Shonah: What have been some benefits for past clients?

Guida: To develop their self-esteem has permitted some of them to find new customers.  For some public speaking with more confidence and for others to find jobs, etc.

Put simply: to develop their skills in their professional field.

Shonah: How did you start in your business? What is your background?

Guida: I began my career as a language teacher and translator; after that, I worked in several companies. Today I bring together my experience in international business, communication and marketing, and my experience in the voice field.

Guida Bulha working with a client

Shonah: When did you start doing this line of work and why?

Guida: I started in April 2008. More than ten years ago, I participated in a vocal workshop. There, I discovered that the voice – my passion – was much more than a simple emission of sounds. The voice is “something” fragile and powerful. It was a great surprise for me. Therefore, I decided to push my discovery further and I undertook training in this area.

Shonah: What is the link with workshops or training sessions – such as public speaking, telephone interactions, front-line workers, sales, team building – and the body and the voice?

Guida: People who work in these areas use their voices to communicate.  You know, the most important part when you communicate is the non-verbal language, and that the voice is embodied in … the body. To equilibrate these three parts of communication. I mean; the body, the voice and the word, are fundamental. If you want to be heard and understood.

Shonah: How long have you been in Grenoble?

Guida: I have been here for 19 years. I saw the mountains and I fell in love.

Shonah: How do you help people to help themselves?

Guida: I help them to find – or to be conscious – that they have in themselves the resources to communicate. I accompany people to find the confidence in themselves.

Shonah: What are your plans for the future? 

Guida:  Well, I want to develop in other directions. I think particularly in the English speaking community. I want to propose to them workshops and training sessions to improve French or to improve their skills in public speaking or other themes. In French or in English. It is also possible to work the voice to sing or to speak. Just to find the pleasure to be confident.

Shonah: Thanks so much to Guida.  If you would like to contact Guida for further information you can do so through her website at Guida Bulha Corps et Voix.

Guida Bulha in action

Judith Bouvard, Dean of Grenoble Graduate School of Business

Grenoble Life talks to Judith Bouvard, Dean of Grenoble Graduate School of Business, about her background, the changing business and training environment in France, and why students should consider coming to Grenoble.

Grenoble Life: Where do you come from originally?

Judith Bouvard: I was born in a small town near Manchester in the North of England. 

GL: Why did you come to Grenoble ?

Judith: When I left Manchester I went to live in Romans in the Drôme, to work in the luxury shoe industry. After a couple of years there I came to live in Grenoble to resume my studies.

GL: What kind of work did you first do on arrival in Grenoble ?

Judith: When I arrived in Grenoble at the same time as I was studying I was working part-time for a UK firm as a marketing consultant helping them to develop the market of protective clothing for building sites and road works. I then started to work in the training and continuing education business by doing some teaching and helping some French companies to set up in-house training courses.

Then I started working at ESC Grenoble – this was the name of the school before we became ‘Grenoble Ecole de Management (GEM)’. I was involved with the school right from the day it was founded and I was even a member of the entrance juries for the Grande Ecole program before the building was finished.

I started teaching at the school and little by little I increased my contributions by developing the international relations. Then, in 1995, I created the Master in International Business (MIB), which was the first international program to be offered by GEM. I really felt there was a niche market for such an Master in Management program taught in English in Grenoble.

I gradually introduced more international degree programs taught through the medium of English and continued to develop the portfolio of international programs until GGSB became one of the schools of GEM.     

Parallel to that I continued my studies on the Henley DBA program and also obtained a Postgraduate Diploma in Management Consultancy.

GL: What three professional achievements are you most proud of?

Judith: Developing a whole new international school from nothing and setting up all the programs; putting Grenoble on the map in international rankings, such as those of the prestigious Financial Times. I am also very proud of the careers and success stories of our graduates further to qualifications that I designed.

GL: Apart from the quality of the course programmes on offer at GGSB, why should potential students consider coming to Grenoble?

Judith: They should certainly consider coming for the dynamic nature of the city. It is easy to get by in Grenoble for non-French speakers. There is not a day that goes by without me hearing English on the street. However, most of our students become quite fluent in French rather rapidly as they experience true French culture. Our students are also sure to build a large international network of friends they can rely on in the future due to the fantastic diversity of the student population at GGSB.

GL: You have created partnerships between GGSB and schools around the world, including those in Iran and Saudi Arabia. As a woman, did you face any challenges in this respect?

Judith: The challenge was for me to actually challenge the pre-conceived ideas of what people had warned me about in advance. In those countries, people actually respect you for your intellect, status and qualifications regardless of your gender. Qualifications come above anything else and with more and more women gaining higher education degrees, the challenge for them is lessening. The other challenge was the dress code, but only from a comfort point of view. Wearing a head scarf when it is 40 degrees outside can be quite uncomfortable when you are not used to that!

GL: How has the business environment changed since you arrived in France, and how has GGSB contributed to this change?

Judith: Over the past 30 years, I have seen more international exchanges – both academic and corporate – and better means to conduct these exchanges, thanks to technology. Technology has definitely changed the way people do business. We can now work with different parts of the world without feeling that it is far away. For example I can be talking to a colleague in China or Singapore in the morning and to another colleague in Mexico in the evening. Of course the result is that the working day can be quite long!

At GGSB, we train qualified managers capable of working beyond national borders with a multitude of cultures and ethnic backgrounds. Our graduates are increasingly working in virtual teams spread over different countries. The contact with colleagues all around the world definitely adds a different dimension to business. 

GL: How has the learning and training environment changed?

Judith: We now have access to more information, thanks to the internet. What used to be called a ‘correspondence course’ is now called a ‘distance learning course’; technology has made learning more user-friendly. Furthermore, whereas years ago classes were made of one single nationality, the learning environment has become highly international, offering numerous opportunities for students.

Also the faculty members have become more like facilitators than lecturers. At GGSB gone are the days of long monologues by a lecture standing in front of the students. Now there is far more interaction and exchange between the lecturer and the students. Also I think that business schools have realised that it is important to have a good blend of lecturers with a more academic approach and business professionals who bring their work experience to the classroom.

GL: What is next for you and the school?

Judith: I’m very excited about our new Global Executive MBA that will begin in January 2011. This new course will run in eight different locations: Grenoble – Geneva – Moscow – London – New York – Singapore – New Delhi – Beijing, and is aimed at top managers who will travel to each location for specific courses and country case-studies.

This Global EMBA is the result of all the knowledge I’ve acquired over the years, after observing how companies function and their different needs. I’m also an AMBA auditor, so I’ve got to examine various programs, their pluses and minus.

I’m also preparing the future of GGSB when I will no longer be there to ensure the continuity of GGSB. I’m busy getting the right people in so the school will keep the same prestige and have the possibility of progressing. I’m proud as I see the next generation come in to be trained by GGSB. Often, children of those who I taught come to seek advice and are keen to live the same enriching experience at GGSB as their parents did.

Resident Grenoble Life photographer Suzanne Bonnefond shares a mini photo-essay about transhumance … and if you don’t know what that is, you’ll have to read on.

Transhumance is an ancient tradition. Herds of sheep from the South of France return to the summits of the Alps in search of fresh pastures, to stay there all summer.

In the past, these herds accompanied the shepherds arriving by foot across the Alps. It took them several days, sometimes weeks. They took the paths we now use as trails for hiking. They have been immortalised in literature by the works of Jean Giono.

These days, the herds arrive by lorry. This one came in from the Alpes de Haute Provence, having crossed the col du Lautaret.

Arriving in Chazelet, in the spectacular setting of la Meije, a herd of a thousand sheep returns to pastures 2000m in altitude, where it will stay until October.

We can easily see them on hikes in the Oisans, Belledonne or the Vercors.

Finally, if you want to hear what the transhumance sounds like, click here.

Skiing in June? You bet! Photo: Christa Gimblett

Grenoble Life ski reporter Christa Gimblett has some good news for those of us sweltering in the valley: there is still some snow left to ski.

All right everyone, it’s a good two months since you all went skiing, I know you’re missing it already. Don’t deny it.

Well the good news is that you don’t have to wait until December for your next fix of the white stuff because both 2Alpes and Tignes are open even as we speak, and offering more summer skiing than we’ve seen in years. All right, Tignes is a long drive for a bit of glacier skiing, but come on, 2Alpes is virtually on the doorstep.

Usually restricted to the summer park and the glacier runs above 3200m, this year the resort is open and skiable down to midstation at 2600m. There’s even a fair bit of off-piste and plenty of snow on the closed areas for those who know what they’re doing and are prepared to hike for it.

I’m not going to tell you that summer skiing is anything other than expensive – it isn’t. But your pass buys you a whole lot of other activities as well, so if you’re happy to make skiing just one part of a day out or a mountain weekend you’ll get good value.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that you have to get up there first thing to make the most of it (unless you like boiler plate ice, in which case be my guest). Your best plan is to get to resort for 09:30 and buy a half day pass, which lets you ski until lunchtime. Start with the runs below 3200m, which will have softened up nicely by this time, then when you’ve done that a few times, move up to the top.

The only way off the glacier at the end of the morning is by the main lift, so expect to queue – or alternatively have a beer on the restaurant terrace, leave the scrum to the race teams and descend at your leisure.

The half day pass gives you access to the rest of resort until close of play at 18:00, so you can spend the afternoon mountain biking (100km of marked trails plus a bike park), ice skating (included with your pass) or just riding the lifts, admiring the views and doing a bit of walking. If you want to make a weekend of it, a two-day ski/VTT ticket also gives you unlimited swimming and skating, and a bit of tennis and summer luge to boot.

The mountain biking and other activities go from strength to strength over the summer, but if you want to make the most of the skiing, do it soon – the snow won’t hang around until August in this weather, and who knows when we’ll see another season like this one? So get yourself up there now, while you still can.

Photo: Christa Gimblett

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Christa Gimblett left the UK for a seasonal job in Europe in the recession of the early 90s and forgot to go home again, spending nearly 15 years working for UK tour operators up various mountains. Now living in Bourg d’Oisans with no cash, two cats, a man with a broken foot and a car which looks like a frog.

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Garvin on the sofa

Grenoble Life talks to Garvin, Grenoble’s premier Franco-Welsh-Scots rock band, about their musical background and development as a band; and streams two of their songs especially for you!

Garvin are Calumn Mackay, Vincent Thourigny and Gareth Powell. They were in conversation with James Dalrymple of Grenoble Life.

Listen to Spellbound confused by Garvin: here

Listen to Same Crusade by Garvin: here

Grenoble Life: On tracks like Spellbound Confused and Same Crusade I hear an emotive guitar-led pop that I associate with British alt-rock. However, tracks like Vocation seem to have a more reggae flavour, and there are occasional flutters of latin-sounding guitar in a number of your songs. Is there a ‘Garvin sound’?

Calumn: We like to experiment with different instruments, bringing different sounds to the table depending on the feel of the song. For instance, I sometimes use electronic Roland V-drums instead of, or as well as, my traditional acoustic drum kit. Also, as each of us dabbles with song writing in different ways, we are not fixed to a single approach.

Gareth: I think there is a certain Garvin ‘sound’ since vocal textures and playing styles are idiosyncratic. As far as our musical and composition style is concerned though, we have a consciously open-minded approach which is incredibly inspirational – no restrictions. Also, we like the surprise element in music.

I suppose we have to keep an eye on not going too far off the track, but we just aren’t thinking like that. We’re enjoying exploring and mixing up styles.

Vince: The group’s sound is moulded from each of the band member’s influences as we compose. The fact that we all participate collectively in the composition of the songs, as well as the inherent chemistry developed when we’re playing, means that the resulting sound tends to be one and our own. We like to experiment and explore new horizons, which undoubtedly add to the flavour of Garvin’s music.

GL: What are your musical backgrounds? What other bands have you been in and what kind of music did you play?

Calumn: I’ve played in bands since I was 14, starting on piano then moving quickly onto drums. After a few school/student bands, I joined a cult punk/new wave band called the Scars. After our first single Adultery/Horrorshow, we played regularly in London and toured with bands like The Human League, The Rezillos, Siouxsie and the Banshees and The Cure. I took a year out of school to decide whether I wanted to be a full time musician. After three singles and with an imminent album looming, bizarrely, I decided to go to college instead.

In 2005 I met up again with the Scars to do a cameo spot with Lemon Jelly, who had sampled a big chunk of Horrorshow, on a single which charted in the UK. I took a cut-down V-drum kit in a suitcase on a plane to Edinburgh and then to London for the short five minute appearances. It was great to get up on a stage in front of 4000 people and the London concert was broadcast live on BBC radio. Paul from the Scars managed to purchase the rights of the Scars recordings back from EMI and released a limited edition CD. There are apparently still Scars fans out there!

While a student in Edinburgh I joined Blues n Trouble (amongst other bands) and connected with the blues for the first time. BnT went on to release tons of albums, tour extensively and are still going now. I’ll be doing a guest spot in a band with their original guitarist at the RockBeir festival in Venlo this summer.

Later I lived in London and answered an ad in Melody Maker for a blues band called the Pinetops Boogiemen. We had regular gigs in south east London pubs and also in a few nice venues like the Half Moon on Herne Hill. We still meet up every couple of years to record a CD, but we have had no commercial success. It was a fantastic experience though and we are all life long friends.

I moved to France in 1995 and met Gareth through a mutual friend. We played in various line ups, gigging now and again and recording occasionally. Our last group, XL5, was a 1970s-style British rock band.

I’ve also been playing in the King Billies blues band for a couple of years and am part of the Lou Pelaya Celtic association where I occasionally play drums and acoustic guitar (badly).

I joined the Garvin duo in summer 2009 after jamming at a couple of their pub gigs at the Druids bar in Grenoble. There’s great energy and stamina in the group as well as a comfortable chemistry. Very strong creativity too, and the door is always open to any new ideas and adventures – the way it should be!

Gareth: My first gig in Swansea Students Union was at age 16; a terrifying experience – lost a lot of weight in the three or four days leading up to it. Then played in cover bands and slogged at the original music scene in the UK. I got to do many gigs and European tours with a few semi-known rock bands when I lived in Wales, and even after coming to France to live. I am still in touch with the guys in my last UK band, and I get to play impromptu gigs with them from time to time. They currently have a band called the Storys from Swansea, who achieved some success and tour regularly with big names. While they played in Monaco last year, they asked me to replace their guitarist who’d had a bit of a nervous breakdown. I played a gig in the Globe in Monaco, and the day after in front of 50 thousand people opening for (cringe…) Celine Dion in Ajax stadium, Amsterdam. That was surreal – I had song notes and chords written on a piece of paper at my feet.

I’d love to do big shows like that with Garvin – that would be the “mutts”… though preferably supporting U2 or Kings of Leon instead of Celine!

Vince: I am basically self-taught. I could hardly play the guitar when I joined my first group at 16, but I’ve never stopped since. For the last few years I worked on solo projects and did many live shows using a loop-sampler to create multi-layered live song arrangements, but I can say that playing in a band is a real pleasure, especially given the high potential of this group. I’m not really interested in talking about what I used to do, instead I’m much more interested in talking about what we are going to do!

GL: Please can each member of the band name three bands/artists that have influenced them the most.

Calumn: Difficult to say. I like a large spectrum of music, although in my formative years I liked The Doors, original Ultravox, and I still like Carol King.

Gareth: I’d have to say people like Jeff Beck, Adrian Belew, Robert Fripp are notable guitar influences; and David Sylvian, Cy Curnin, The Divine Comedy, as vocal influences. General music/composition influences are bands like The Cocteau Twins, Kings of Lyon, Jeff Buckley, Interpol, Bjork, Led Zeppelin, or anything new that comes along and blows me away.

Vince: I think my musical development and appreciation was deeply influenced by The Beatles. I learned to play, sing and compose listening to their music. I used to attempt to reproduce their techniques on my own recordings. King Crimson was also a revelation for me in my formative years. I have great admiration for a more recent discovery, Joseph Arthur, a New-York singer/songwriter and all-round artist.

GL: What facilities are there for new bands in Grenoble to get together and jam?

Gareth: There are rehearsal places and some associations that try to nurture this around the town, but we aren’t the best guys to ask since we are fortunate enough to have our own studio that is also adequate for rehearsing live sets. And we definitely jam a lot …

GL: In your view what are some of the best bars and pubs to watch live music in Grenoble?

Calumn: I’m not really sure there are any decent venues for groups. We tend to be squashed into corners in bars and I usually have to leave most of my drum kit behind most of the time. Salle EVE is pretty good.

Gareth: Le Bobine is gaining a good reputation. There does seem to be a response in progress to the local Grenoble musicians’ plight of having embarrassingly few venues for such a cosmopolitan city. It’s still difficult to play locally regularly enough for a new group to build a following. For a few months we played fortnightly residencies in Druids Pub, an Irish bar in Grenoble, which was good but a bit tight under the arms.

GL: For the British members of the band: how has living in France influenced your approach to music?

Calumn: I don’t think is has affected me really, although I’m probably more open to French music than I otherwise would’ve been. Media moves so fast these days so for the mainstream I’m probably listening to the same music here than I would be in the UK. Also we live in a bit of a bubble with access to UK TV and radio at home.

Gareth: There was an initial shock at going from a three to four night per week gig rate in the UK to zero – it was like going back to the bedroom to play guitar again, which was not what I’d imagined. I fortunately found an association who share-owned a recording studio (Studio 33) in town. After persuading them to let me join them I spent a long time writing and recording songs mainly on my own. It taught me about producing music and also allowed me to develop a few things, like singing, so I don’t consider it as wasted time, even if it was a bit of an implosion in some respects. The other good thing is it was how I met Calumn. The immediate accessibility of a studio has now become a luxury that I couldn’t live without.

GL: For the French member of the band: how has playing with Brits influenced your approach to music?

Vince: To be honest, I’ve never really listened to much French music or bands. I’ve always been more attentive and influenced by British or American bands since adolescence. That’s probably why I get on so well with Gareth and Calumn, as our common language is the music which I feel very at home with.

GL: Are there any other local bands that you can recommend to Grenoble Life readers?

Gareth: There are a few authentic Anglophone things like Barefoot Iano, an Australian multi-talent, and a guy called Neil Dixon from Chambery, that sound excellent, that Grenoble Life readers should try to check out.

Vince: Huh? No – just Garvin [laughs]! In fact, I’m not very aware about the local scene in Grenoble. I know there are many bands and quite a few good ones out there, but there are not many places to see band play…

GL: Any plans to record a full length CD or EP?

Calumn: Absolutely.

Gareth: Yes (sigh) – we are very productive so it’s hard to keep up with the creativity level in the studio, and completely finish everything – we have enough songs for at least three or four full albums already; all at different stages of completion. Vince hit on the idea recently of producing multiple mini-albums that we can continue to produce and sell at gigs or elsewhere. We have also a six-song CD recorded live in session at Radio Campus for English Talk Radio and Le Son de Garage programmes – this is one of the mini-albums.

GL: Where can we see you play next?

Gareth: We’re pretty busy all through June and July – more gigs coming in every week, so best to checkout the events section on our MySpace site or our facebook page if you’re that way inclined.

Vince: We’re doing three or four private concerts/fêtes that aren’t open to the general public in June, but we’ll be at Zélées Bar (Grenoble) on Thursday 17th June, and on the 21st we headline at Tullins for the music festival. Also, on July 1st we’re playing at the Magellan Bar (Voiron).

Garvin

Hoping to relocate to France?

Sylvie Leroux is account manager at ETC Logos, a company specialising in relocating foreign employees to the Grenoble area. Here are some of her top tips for successful relocation.

That’s it, your management has made the decision!  

THEY need YOU in Grenoble, to exchange your skills with the French team … 

You might have a sense of mixed feelings and certainly a whole load of questions left unanswered by your company (at home or in France). 

Well, here are a few basic tips … 

First, you need to decide wether you want to be helped or not. You can get a relocation agent, someone who knows the town, the area; a local company being better than an international group. They will advise you on the right place to live according to your criteria and they know the right people, which might be just as important as having the right documents. They have good contacts with real estate agents, bank managers or French administration staff and with a phone call,  they can settle any problem which would be trivial at home but can become huge when abroad. 

“We, at ETC Logos, have been working in Grenoble for more than 15 years and we’ve got a very good network,” says Isabelle Callard, Relocation Manager. ‘”When I came back from the USA in 1986, I started with the concept of relocation, people didn’t really know what it meant, today, it’s easier as we are well recognised in this field.” 

Second, be patient! Immigration process: 3–4 months; house search: 2–4 weeks; getting a plumber to come and fix a leak: from 2 hours to up to five days! 

The concept of time and priorities is different all over the world and France tends to be very slow on some issues. 

Again, the person who deals with your relocation will follow up these issues and make things easier for you. You can get down to work and they’ll think about calling the plumber one more time! 

A third piece of advice I would give is that you need to be prepared to face a different culture. 

Although we’re living in a global village, the concept of culture is engrained deeply in each one of us, often without us being aware of it. 

France is in Europe, France is a developed country, France is part of the G20, but France and French people have their own social and working habits which you’ll need to get used to. Grenoble even has its own culture, being a very cosmopolitan, expensive and provincial town. 

The relocation agent can understand those differences and try to work with you on them by providing cross-cultural seminars. 

But beware, a number of people call themselves consultants in relocation or relocation agencies … so make sure you or your company selects one that has a comprehensive range of services, starting from the immigration process before the move to getting someone who will accompany you during your stay and assist you when the assignment is over. 

These people will be the ones you put all your trust in: they will get you to sign official documents in French – of which you may not speak a word – for your house, your immigration file, your bank account. 

Now you can still decide to do it all by yourself, but remember that it might be the recipe for a disastrous relocation.

Helen McEwan (left) with children joining in on English Talk Radio

The May 21 English Talk Radio show features Helen McEwan of ABC Anglais, and took place at Les Petits Bilingues, Grenoble.

Listen to the show: here

English Talk Radio is a talk show in English on 90.8 Radio Campus Grenoble. We talk about film, theatre, finance, restaurants, travel, and have a variety of topical guests. There are four presenters: Kristine Minski talks about finance, Christina Menez talks about China, Mary Zaccai talks about student issues, and Vivian Draper – animatrice/rédactrice – hosts the show. Every Sunday at 12.30pm, and every Wednesday at 7pm on 90.8, Radio Campus Grenoble and live on www.campusgrenoble.org – and also here on Grenoble Life.

Photo: BimiB

Felicity Lodge is a Grenoble-based financial planner with The Spectrum IFA Group, offering independent financial planning advice for expatriates in the Alps region. Here is her guide to life insurance in France.  

Benjamin Franklin said, “in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes“.  

There is not a great deal you can do about either. Taxes have to be paid, although you can make sure that you are not paying more than you need to, and no matter how hard scientists try, death will come sooner or later. 

How long are you going to live for?  

Few people can confidently answer this question and the aim of financial planning is to have the means of providing for yourself and your family whatever happens. Very few people can say that they die at just the right time and the main situations we try to cover are that you die too early, which can leave your family with financial difficulties, or you die too late and run the risk of having to live on a reduced income. 

Both of these situations can be covered using different forms of life insurance. There are many forms of life insurance which can be confusing. The two most commonly used in France are assurance vie (life insurance bond) which is a long-term savings policy, and assurance décès (term life insurance) which provides payment in the case of death. By saving money now in an assurance vie, you can build up a lump sum for expected or unexpected expenses in the future, or to fund your retirement. By taking out assurance décès, you will pay a small monthly sum to the insurance company, who will then pay out a lump sum on the death of the insured. 

Assurance vie 

Many of you will have heard of assurance vie, however, most expats will not realise how widely used and tax-efficient these policies are in France.  It is a form of savings where you put money into the policy, then within the policy a number of different investments are available depending on the particular assurance vie you chose.  Many French people save for their retirement using an assurance vie rather than a personal pension because of its superior flexibility. Since you can take the proceeds at any age and maximum tax efficiency is after only eight years, an assurance vie can also be used to save for any future expenses such as university expenses, weddings, or even for the holiday of a lifetime. 

I have discussed the details of assurance vie in a little more detail in my article Arranging your finances in France – an overview but please feel free to contact me if you want any further information. 

Assurance décès 

Assurance décès (temporaire), which pays a lump sum upon the death of the insured, is a very valuable but much underused insurance. It is invaluable for people with young children, but for a number of reasons most families are under-insured and many families are at risk of financial hardship should the worst happen. For some people the death of a spouse is not something they like to think about, others do not like to pay for something they consider unlikely and sometimes people assume that they will be provided for by the state or by family. What you have to remember is that the monthly payment you make is usually relatively small compared to the benefit you receive should you have to claim and provides a huge peace of mind. 

This type of insurance will already be held by most of you with mortgages to cover all or part of the outstanding loan. You may also have a small amount provided by your employer, but you should bear in mind that this will cease when you stop working for that employer. Even if you already have these insurances, it is not usually enough to maintain your standard of living. 

To work out how much cover you need, you have to work out how much money you need to cover your living expenses (including holidays, future expenses such as education and any extras), and how much income you would have available (I can help you for no charge if you send me an email).  If you do this, remember the extra childcare costs. Many people forget to insure a non-working spouse because she does not have an income. In fact, if you were to have to pay someone to look after your children, clean your house and do your washing, particularly if you work long hours, there are significant costs involved!  Being an expat you would also have to consider whether you would want to return to your own country, which would incur further costs. 

Sometimes it is necessary to compromise between how much insurance you need and how much you can afford. Again, I can help you to find the best balance. 

Overview 

Assurance vie and assurance décès are essential financial planning tools, making sure your family is financially secure whatever happens. 

Assurance vie is a way of saving money for the future. It is very flexible and tax efficient and with the right policy you will have a lifelong structure to manage your investments, enabling you to tailor your portfolio as your circumstances evolve. 

Assurance décès is the one thing you pay for but hope you will never receive any benefit. Thankfully it is rare that you have to claim, but in the event that you do the benefit to your family is immense.

Felicity Lodge, based in Grenoble, is a financial planner with The Spectrum IFA Group. For a free, no-obligation consultation please contact felicity.lodge (at) spectrum-ifa.com.

URSSAF - another elegant French acronym

Patrick Owen shares his experience starting an English teaching business, becoming an Auto-entrepreneur and dealing with France’s particular administrative complexity and love of acronyms.  

So as I come to the end of my ACCRE, I’ve contacted the URSSAF who told me to contact the APCE.  I also contacted the RSI and the CIPAV but had no response.  Therefore I sent an email to the CNAVPL.  I must, also, remember to send my annual report to the DRTEPF.  If all of this sounds like double Dutch, welcome to my world, since I started my own business.  I knew the French administration loved acronyms having lived in France for eight years, dealing with the CAF, EDF, GDF, etc.  However, when I set up my own company I entered a whole new ball game. 

After working in various language schools I decided to work for myself.  Everyone warned me against it; “It’s really complicated,” and, “The charges are really high,” were just two of the comments I heard.  It is amazing that France has so many small businesses, when you hear all the negative reactions.  In the beginning, I wasn’t sure what type of business to create with various projects in mind.  However, I soon discovered that in France, once you have trained to do one thing changing direction is not easy. Changing careers involves financial and time investments that I did not have.  I therefore decided to set up a language teaching business, since this was what I knew best. 

Now, it might be useful to explain why I had decided to set up my own business.  Many language schools will employ teachers on freelance contracts, as I had discovered during my first year in France.  The problem is that to work for a business school or university, where the better pay rates are, you need a principal employer.  In addition, for a reason that I can only speculate at, few employers are willing to sign the paper agreeing to be your principal employer.  There are two solutions: one is to use a société de portage, the other is to be your own employer.  The société de portage acts as your employer, in the sense that they take care of all the administrative paperwork, of course for this service they take a fee.  My feeling was that the fee charged didn’t really justify the work involved,  I therefore decided to set up for myself. 

I attended an event held by my local Chamber of Commerce, which didn’t turn out to be much help.  I was unable to get answers to my questions and, as I was not setting up a commercial activity, they were not the right people to ask.  In the end, it was internet forums that proved to be the most help.  I typed my questions into Google and sifted through the responses.  It was here that I learnt I would have to see the URSSAF.  They seem to be the organisation that catches the companies who are not commercial or tradesmen.  I also discovered that provided I didn’t earn too much and didn’t employ anyone else, the process was fairly simple. 

I printed a form on the internet and headed for the URSSAF.  I had been told I didn’t need an appointment.  This worried me slightly, as I had experienced the queues at the Social Security and the Prefecture.  I was pleasantly surprised to be received within ten minutes of my arrival by a pleasant and helpful adviser.  She rapidly entered my details and answered my questions, in less than an hour I was in business, literally.  She offered me a free appointment with an accountant and, best of all, showed me I was eligible for a dispensation of social taxes for one year.  I left the URSSAF with a whole different image of the French administration. 

The dispensation for one year is important and a big helping hand.  Normally a company’s charges are fixed for the first and second years.  Then the third year’s charges are calculated on the real income of the second year.  The problem is that, although, the first year’s charges are relatively light, in the second they double and this kills a lot of small businesses.  Now, certain categories of business creators, the unemployed for example, can ask for a first year free of charges.  I qualified because, although I resigned, I had been looking after my kids one day a week and received income support.  This taught me that you have to read everything because there is often an advantageous exception which you may not always be told about. 

While surfing the internet, I also discovered that if I wanted to teach in companies I would need to make a déclaration d’activité with the DRTEFP (Direction Régionale du Travail, de l’Emploi et de la Formation Professionnelle).  In France, companies are obliged to pay a tax towards the training of their employees.  This tax is often collected by organisations which manage the training funds.  These organisations will only accept training courses run by companies who have made the declaration.  Many people wrongly refer to it as an agreement, however the DRTEFP are very strict in their literature that it is not an agreement from the state, merely a declaration.  

I discovered that with the right documentation, a curriculum vitae, a casier judiciaire vierge (a document you can order online showing you have never committed a crime), and your first training contract the procedure was straightforward.  It is the contract which can be a little complicated, if you haven’t got a declaration number how can you sign a contract?  I got around this problem by noting that my declaration was being processed, and offering my first client a clause whereby if I didn’t get the number the contract was null and void. 

I treated starting my business rather as a challenge and as time went on it became a puzzle, for which I was never sure I had all the pieces.  To be honest I enjoyed pitting myself against the French administration and proving those who said it would be hard to do wrong.  It must be said that I chose the simplest possible structure and being a teacher, who teaches in companies, I have very few overheads. 

It is worth mentioning in conclusion that a law was passed in 2008 making it even easier for freelance teachers.  The status of Auto-entrepreneur is designed for people who may have multiple employers as well as working for themselves.  The process of setting up is very simple and can even be done online.  The real boost however comes in terms of charges and tax.  The Auto-entrepreneur can choose to declare his turnover each month or trimester.  The social charges and tax are calculated based on what he declares and paid immediately.  This avoids the nasty bills arriving one year after a good year.  It also means that if you have a month with no income you pay nothing.  This regime is much more sensible for someone like me. 

Unfortunately, and here is the downside of my experience, getting information about this new status has been hard.  I have read the law and the Auto-entrepreneur’s handbook.  As a sole trader I can ask to benefit from the same regime, and I have done so which brings us back to the beginning of the article.  The acronyms are all the people I have contacted to ask for help changing my status.  

On the whole my experience has been positive; the principal problem has been people.  Everything one needs to know is on the internet.  When dealing with employees of the various administrations it is a case of pot luck.  The first person I saw was excellent, others have been less so.  I once made the mistake of phoning on the day of a strike, my call was answered after prolonged ringing by a harassed and unhelpful lady.  I blame myself for this one, though, after three years in France I should have known you don’t phone the public service on strike days, I was lucky someone answered.  My advice is to be determined, do your research and treat the experience as fun, and you will be fine. 

Patrick Owen
www.englishcoach38.com
letter-from-france.blogspot.com

A filled blackboard. Photo: Rainer Ebert

In response to criticism of the education system on Grenoble Life and from the Anglophone community in France, Iain Smears mounts a passionate defence of French schooling.

Many people in the Anglophone community in Grenoble will come into contact with the French education system either through their studies or those of their family members. There are aspects about it which seem to draw criticism from a considerable proportion of the English-speaking community.

In this article, I would like to depict how my own experience of doing maternelle, primaire, collège and lycée in Grenoble, then of going to university in the UK, has shown me the many benefits of the education on offer here. In fact, it is precisely some of those aspects of the system which are often criticised which I would argue have been of value to me in my university studies. I will focus on secondary education, or more specifically the Bac Général, as I have only glimpses and second hand experience of French higher education and cannot claim to know much about the other paths in secondary education.

A major concern for some is the long hours of schooling throughout collège and lycée. I did the Bac Scientifique with the OIB (L’option internationale du baccalauréat), and I’m the first to admit that it was demanding. On a few occasions, I’ve been asked by parents with children about to embark on this path if it’s true that I did 50 hours of work a week. Their frowns of anguish are of little surprise to me when I place a finger on my lip, recollect, then declare that it was probably a dozen or so hours more than that.

I do see the sense in many of the objections to long school days and I will readily concede that perhaps the content of lessons from 5-6 pm isn’t what I remember the best – however, little is said of the end result of French schooling: how does it influence one’s experiences in higher education and after that?

I chose to study mathematics in the UK. Bit by bit, I noticed how my fellow students were finding the course more trying than I was – some would find it hard to do their work on time, others found it hard to get out of bed, some needed vast amounts of caffeine or chocolate to feel ready to take on their work. Someone put my thoughts into words by calling it a “great big hangover for having partied for the previous 18 years.”

For my part, I continued at my usual rhythm inherited from Terminale by learning my lectures as well as I could and doing my homework sooner rather than later. I think that strong discipline not only leads to successfully acquiring the material, but also helps to explore the subject to its fullest, satisfy one’s curiosity and therefore enjoy one’s studies.

The extensive testing and harsh grading schemes in French education also attract criticism. Yet I believe that it is instead very beneficial to get substantial practice of long examinations. Being able to focus and to stay sharp under pressure is an important part of exam technique and I am glad I was able to get practice in this before end-of-year exams at university.

As for the unforgiving grading, it made those good grades well deserved – something in which I found satisfaction. I found that for me and other pupils at school, it encouraged a determined attitude towards trying one’s upmost. Compare this to the comments I have heard of several students in the UK about how they were “spoon-fed just to pass exams” and “weren’t proving [their] own ability, but that of [their] teacher”, which has not helped them find self-confidence and belief in their ability. I think that learning that someone can indeed rise up to a challenge is important for him to value and appreciate his work and also helps in face of future challenges.

It is true that some people can find the difficult grading scheme discouraging. But even though grades matter for later progression, it should be remembered that what is learnt matters most. Whether someone gets a B or C on an A-level or roughly equivalently [i] a 10 on the Bac, what they have gained from school will likely be the same. When that person goes onto university, it is what that person has acquired that will be key. I know of some who struggled in a subject throughout lycée, then needed that knowledge to some extent in their later studies, and have told me since that they felt they were at an advantage against others in their group.

However if there is a clear-cut problem with the grading system, it is that it puts at a disadvantage French students who wish to study abroad, e.g. the UK. This is because admissions tutors might not be aware of the discrepancies between the systems and take estimated grades for the Baccalaureate at face value – i.e. they would assume, say, that an A is worth 16 on the Bac. Things are made worse by the fact that high numbers of UK students get the top mark: according to wikipedia [ii], 43.7% of students taking an A-level in Mathematics got an A in 2007. And unlike A-levels, Baccalaureate students cannot retake exams to improve their grades. This can result in disproportionately demanding offers for Baccalaureate pupils.

A final advantage of the French education system, which is not immediately apparent to those still undertaking it, is that it offers flexibility in later choices. Of those who did the Bac Scientifique in my class, some have gone into media relations, politics, languages, nursing… Some feel that the schooling did not suit them, but what they have done enables them to embark on a wide range of paths afterwards.

In conclusion, even though the French secondary education system has its faults, I hope it will not be forgotten that the overall result of the extensive schooling is threefold. First, it is an opening to numerous topics – it showcases vast bodies of knowledge and works to stimulate the pupil’s mind in all forms. Second, it helps to equip its pupils with the attitude, determination, self-confidence and ethos which are important in all walks of life. Third, it aims to keep as many doors open as possible all the way until the end of the Baccalaureate. Combined, I think these three aspects allow the education system to offer what one generally wants: the freedom to choose one’s way through an opening to the world.

Place Grenette, c.1900

In the second part of John Lubbock‘s brief history of Grenoble he finds himself scratching beneath the surface of the city and discovering a ”post-apocalyptic 19th century parallel universe,” among other things.

I had long been puzzled by an impressive fortification system which stands near my house on one side of Parc Paul Mistral, completely hidden by trees and currently hosting a bmx/mountainbike track on one side. I had to telephone the resident historian of the Maison de Tourisme to find any information about this structure, which turns out to have been constructed in 1813 by the celebrated military engineer Générale Haxo (who also later reconstructed the Bastille) to protect against a possible southern invasion of France by the Austrian Empire.

The Austrians indeed eventually invaded the same year and were repulsed by the city defences, but returned to occupy Grenoble in 1814 and again in 1815. These walls, or enceintes, as they say in French, (the same word is used for pregnant as well as for hi-fi speakers, which is clearly intended to confuse and frustrate learners of French) were later demolished to make way for roads like Boulevard Jean Pain, leaving them an impressive ruin overrun by trees that makes you feel like you are in some post-apocalyptic 19th century parallel universe.

In the 19th century, modernity finally arrived in Grenoble with the construction of the railways. Aristide Bergès, a paper manufacturer, installed a modern paper factory in the Grenoble valley in 1867, where he invented the first hydro-electric motor to power the factory’s turbines. He called this new source of electricity Houille Blanche, or White Oil, which is still used in French to refer to hydroelectricity.

As I said, there is no statue to mark Bergès’s achievement in Grenoble, except for some ugly student housing and a CROUS named after him. However, one look the disservice done to his memory by the invention of photography will tell you that he’s not nearly as sexy as how French romantics imagined Bayard to look. I mean, he doesn’t even have an English language Wikipedia page, which is actually more of a damning criticism of his historical importance.

Bergès, and Bayard. No comparison.

And so to bring us up to the most important century, being that in which most of us were born: the 20th. Since all history is inevitably self-centred, why not congratulate ourselves for being born in the best century – that is if centuries are judged on some kind of Tarantino-esque scale of awarding points for most limbs severed or ears sliced off.

Exposition Internationale de la Houille Blanche et du Tourisme

After the First World War, Mayor Paul Mistral began various social and cultural projects, including the 1925 Exposition Internationale de la Houille Blanche et du Tourisme. Though what these two subjects have in common is something of a mystery; perhaps they couldn’t drum up enough interest in either one by itself. For the occasion, architect Auguste Perret constructed the Tour Perret in Parc Mistral, whose blue lights can be seen from miles around, shining as a beacon to the ability of architects to create Freudian symbols of power.

It is the sole remaining construction from this exhibition, and was used at the time to transmit radio emissions throughout the whole of France, though probably not with much success considering analog transmissions find mountains to be rather a hurdle to overcome. The tower was classed a historic monument in 1998, and a restoration plan is currently à l’étude.

There was a large wave of Italian immigration into Grenoble after the Second World War to help provide workers for the new factories. They stayed after discovering that the French loved eating cheese and bread, but had never thought of combining them inside an oven.

At the outbreak of the Second World War, the Nazi invasion was stopped in the south at the Battle of The Alps, though Grenoble was occupied by the Italian army in 1942-3 after they heard how easy it was to get good pizza there. Unfortunately, the Nazis found the Italians to be a little too laissez-faire about rounding up Jews and resistance fighters in Grenoble, and decided to occupy it themselves in 1943, escalating resistance activities, the most spectacular of which was the destruction of the Bonne barracks and arsenal in December 1943.

American tanks in Grenoble, 1944.

After the war, Grenoble rebounded economically by marketing itself as a winter sports destination, aided by the construction of some hideous new brutalist buildings and ski resorts like Chamrousse for the 1968 Winter Olympic Games.

The last half of the 20th century saw the arrival of new immigrants from North Africa and the realization of the globalized and multiethnic modern character of Grenoble.

Well, there you go. That’s as far as Wikipedia will take us, so I suggest you stop procrastinating on your computer and go outside and make some more history, or else there won’t be anything else to write about, will there? Go on, outside, now …  shoo!

The crèche: in safe hands

Grenoble Life editor James Dalrymple blogs on his experience with French childcare in Grenoble and the difficulties getting that all-important place at a crèche.

Handing over your baby to complete strangers is not first on our list of desirable experiences but it is an everyday reality for working parents. France has a relatively high proportion of working mothers and an enviably fertile population, but a surprisingly short basic maternity leave. These are just some of the contributing factors that necessitate widely available and affordable childcare, which in turn do their bit to help get the balance right between being a parent and having a career.

The scolaire system

Getting a place at a municipal crèche, however, is notoriously difficult in Grenoble (and probably elsewhere in France). The largest intake of babies is in September when toddlers doff their mortar boards and graduate to Ecole Maternelle (nursery school), freeing up space for the newbies. Thus, unless you are confident of conceiving in accordance with the demands of l’année scolaire, you may find yourself out of luck when your congé de maternité or parental comes to an end. (For your info, nine months of pregnancy added to around three months of post-natal maternity leave - give or take – would make this September a good time to conceive in order for your baby to get into the crèche in September 2011 – you know what to do!).

Such crèches are subsidised by the Mairie, but parents still pay the bill depending on their means: making them affordable to all. The charges are subject deductions from the CAF before you see them, so that there is none of the time-consuming reimbursement admin which affects visits to many doctors. For my wife and I, it amounts to about two euro an hour. What’s more, thereafter, you can declare this expense against your annual income tax obligations (impôts) which sees this figure drop by a further 50%. In short, the piggy bank can be left intact for the time being.

In my experience the crèches are clean, well-equipped and staffed, with fresh meals prepared on the premises and bubbly personnel. At the end of each day I am given a detailed report on my daughter’s food intake, sleep time and number of nappies (couches) filled with unnerving precision. I am always reassured she is in safe hands, free to explore a terrain filled with ludic objects to peruse, which makes a change from her reordering my CD collection or trying to rewire a wall socket chez moi. 

The nanny state

The alternative is a crèche familiale: effectively smaller groups of children cared for at somebody’s home. This is billed as a municipal service and thus subsidised but is closer in spirit to having a private nanny. In our case, we were desperate for the lively atmosphere of the crèche for our daughter, with the different carers and larger number of children. Whereas many people appreciate the crèche familiale, we didn’t feel comfortable leaving our daughter with only one person: a person who wields such an enormous influence in a child’s life yet does so largely away from the scrutiny from her peers.

Although I’m sure the majority of women who work at crèches familiales are professional, I have heard of instances in which they were not. And if you refuse the woman the Mairie offers you, they immediately blacklist you and you have no chance of getting subsidised municipal childcare. It seemed that if we accepted this process, it was a big step into the unknown. Private nannies were also scarce at the time, and among those we met who weren’t fully booked there were some who didn’t seem to even particularly like children. These individuals were also unwilling to accept temporary terms with us while we waited for a place at the crèche to become available, as they wanted a longer commitment.

In my local quartier, the municipal crèche is situated ideally at two minutes walk from our flat, and would have stood as a mocking reminder of what we had missed if we hadn’t got a place there. Finally we resolved to make an arrangement whereby our daughter attended the halte garderie, which is effectively the same as the crèche but only for up to two days maximum. Normally this is organised on an ad hoc basis or, as in our case, with temporary rolling contracts. Luckily we were able to make other arrangements for the remaining hours that we needed but it allowed us to ingratiate ourselves a little with the staff there and secure our position on the waiting list until a place made itself available. This happened in three months.

Baby betrayal

At first our daughter was crestfallen upon being left at the crèche, acting as if having befallen an enormous betrayal. Traitor! she seemed to cry upon being passed to the crèche staff. There is an integration system by which you can leave your child at the crèche for a couple of hours at a time, gradually building up to full days, but babies are an unpredictable bunch. One day you feel a guilty tingle of satisfaction when your baby cries on being handed over to a carer: yes, my baby still loves me best! The next day your child will cry when you come to pick her up. Traitor! you seethe in silence. In the parental logic, the latter is just the baby ‘releasing tension’ at the end of the day.

The inevitable inconvenience to all this contact with other children is what has seemed like an endless loop of spectacular illnesses. The first time you see a baby projectile-vomit (à la L’exorciste), it is terrifying, but it is impressive what one can become inured to. The winter just past has been a hard one: with the somewhat false alarm of swine flu providing unwelcome distraction from the lurid retinue of tummy bugs and gastros doing the rounds. At the crèche, there is no escape from the steep curve towards stronger immune systems, but this has to happen at some point.

The three days a week my daughter spends at the crèche currently provide most of her contact with French, despite the efforts of certain staff members to speak English to me. As my wife and I speak English at home we hope this will be an effective path towards her obtaining bilingualism; but it is interesting to see the different phonemes she manages in her babillage. Among the distinctly Anglophone syllables we have started to identify some impressively rolled Rs. Once she yelled what was clearly a resounding Merde!, but I’m sure she didn’t learn that down at the crèche.

If you want my advice, persistence is key. Where there is will there is a way.

Grenoble in 1944

Want to impress your friends with your knowledge of Grenoble’s past? John Lubbock has condensed the history of the city into two short blogs so that you can show off about how much you know.

While the French are justly proud of the things their culture does well throughout the country, such as cheese, ignoring things that aren’t their business, and electro-pop, they’re not so fond of regional particularism, and perhaps this feeds into the lack of promotion of Grenoble’s interesting historical buildings and cultural heritage. Have you ever walked past an old building and thought ‘what is that thing?’, or been inside an unassuming bookshop in the centre of town, only to be confronted by a medieval-looking interior? Perhaps it’s just that Grenoble is a city so obsessed with the future that it doesn’t have too much time for the relics of the past.

Well, I for one am a big fan of relics of the past, and if there was a facebook page for relics of the past, I would be lining up to be their cheerleader.  So, Anglophones with a passing interest in ‘istoire, I know you’re busy people, so we’ll see if we can’t cover 2000 years of Grenoble history in the space of just two short blog posts. Ready? Let’s start with those good old Romans then.

Grenoble is at the crossroads of three valleys, and has been a garrison town since it became part of the Roman Empire in 43BC, when it was called Cularo. The omniscient deity, wikipedia, tells us that the penultimate Emperor of the whole Roman Empire, Gratian, was so touched by the welcome of the people of Cularo that he elevated it to the level of a Roman ‘City’ and began constructing walls to protect it.  Cularo was renamed Gratianopolis in 381 in honour of the Emperor. This name transformed over the next millennia to Graignovol and, after its incorporation into the kingdom of France, changed to its modern pronunciation through association with the word ‘noble’ in reference to the King.

After the fall of the Empire, the city was involved in a game of Merovingian pass the parcel, as it became part of the Burgundian Kingdom, Middle Francia, Lotharingia, and was also pillaged by the Lombards in the sixth century, and by the Ummayid Saracens in the eighth and ninth century. In 1030 it became part of Arelat, territory of the Counts of Albon (later Dauphins de Viennois), a protectorate of the Holy Roman Empire. The appellation Dauphin appears to be a noble title of no more meaning than ‘Compte’, due to the medieval belief that dolphins were the kings of the fishes. Modern anthropology carelessly forgot to tell them that Dolphins are not fishes, and one look at the coat of arms of the Dauphiné will tell you that its creator never saw a water-dwelling creature larger than a pike in his life.

The Coat of Arms of the Dauphiné

No doubt the Dark Ages of Grenoble history were full of peasants shouting ‘Help, Help, I’m being repressed’ for many centuries (see Monty Python and the Holy Grail for illustration) without making so much as a stain on the pages of history, and thus we are left with a dull list of the names of royal managers which resembles the Roll of Honour in the boardroom of a third division football team that nobody cares about. But worry not, for with the arrival of feudalism, interesting things were about to happen to Grenoble that would forever be commemorated by histrionic statues of romantic chevaliers.

In 1349, the last Dauphin, Humbert II, negotiated the “transportation” of Dauphiné to France. An ‘ambitious spendthrift’, Humbert supported several religious foundations, founded the University of Grenoble and sponsored a rich court. He went on Crusade and came back bankrupted, his wife and son having died during his leave. Having run out of luck at the medieval casino, he decided to cash in his chips, sell the Dauphiné to the King of France and retire to a monastery which he presumably pimped out and invited MTV over to try the indoor waterslide in his new ‘crib’.

In 1515, King Francis I appointed Bayard, the “fearless and blameless knight” Lieutenant-General of Dauphiné. Pierre Terrail, lord of Bayard, was born in Pontcharra, near Grenoble in 1476. He fought very bravely during the Italian wars, and Francis I asked Bayard to knight him on the battlefield of Marignan (1515). In a brilliant piece of Quixotic irony, Bayard was killed in 1526 by bullet from an early gunpowder weapon. Modernity – 1, Chivalry – 0.

Despite this exciting tale, Grenoble suffered heavily during this period as the city was burdened with having to support a large military presence, and the plague killed many people. A romantic nineteenth century statue of Bayard stands in Place St. Andre, giving encouragement to all the young Frenchmen who aspire to feats of arms such as combat contre neuf Espanyols and laying siege to Naples. As far as I can tell, there doesn’t seem to be a statue to the Grenoblois who invented hydroelectricity, but then that’s just not as sexy as a guy with a sword who excelled at killing foreigners.

In the sixteenth century, the Wars of Religion saw Grenoble caught in the middle of a sectarian struggle about which it is difficult to make many jokes, so we’ll keep it short. The Dauphiné was an important settlement for Protestants influenced by the Calvinist theology emanating from Geneva. The Huguenot leader, the Baron des Adrets, pillaged the Cathedral of Grenoble, destroying the tombs of former Dauphins in one of many acts of iconoclasm.

In 1575, Lesdiguières became the new leader of the Protestants and allied himself with the pragmatic King Henry IV (who converted from Protestantism to Catholicism to gain the throne, quipping “Paris is well worth a Mass”). However, a Catholic movement, the Ligue, took Grenoble in 1590, refusing to make peace. After months of assaults, Lesdiguières defeated the Ligue and took back Grenoble (which he starved into submission), becoming the leader of the entire province.

Lesdiguières served as lieutenant-general of the Dauphiné until 1626 and began the construction of the Bastille in order to protect the city. He also ordered the construction of new walls and constructed the Hôtel Lesdiguières, which faces the river on one side of the Jardin de Ville. But the religious trouble was not over, and when Louis XIV started oppressing Protestants again in the seventeenth century, the emigration of Huguenot gantiers left Grenoble’s glove industry with no competition, and it became the main industry of the city. One can only imagine that the number of duels skyrocketed as aristocrats always found themselves within a few inches of a glove with which to slap the face of a rival who had questioned the honour of their mistress.  

Prior to the French Revolution, Grenoble was the scene of popular unrest due to financial hardship from the economic and financial crises. The famous Journée des Tuiles (1788) in Grenoble is seen as one of the first popular revolts that started the revolution. The government sent troops to put down a meeting of the Estates of Dauphiné which had convened in Grenoble. The people of Grenoble climbed onto the roofs, where they threw down tiles onto the troops, thus giving the incident its name.

Rue Raoul Blanchard, painted by Debelle a century after the event, and today.

These events influenced two prominent Grenoblois, Barnave and Mounier, who represented Dauphiné in the in the Estates General in Paris. Both sought to stabilize the rapidly shifting political ground, and both became suspected of supporting the Ancien Regime, for which Barnave was executed and Mounier forced to flee to Swizerland. During the revolution, the Bastille was renamed in support of the storming of the Bastille in Paris. Grenoble itself was renamed Grelibre, though they wisely changed it back when Napoleon was crowned Emperor, in recognition of the fact that nobody had become any freer, and that the name itself was rather silly.

Since you will undoubtedly be feeling jet-lagged by such a rapid fast-forward through 1800 years of Grenoble history, we will save the last 200 years for a second blog post, and thus leave you desperate to know how the story ends (spoiler alert: Napoleon meets his Waterloo).

Still searching for the right path in Grenoble?

Grenoble Life’s Shonah Kennedy shares her experience of coming to the city on the “coat-tails” of her husband and discovering she was not the only woman in Grenoble who had temporarily placed their life on hold to be with the man of their dreams.

Heading back to Grenoble after a mini-break in Switzerland I wondered why I felt a little apprehensive. Then it hit me. I was going back to Grenoble AND going back to work! That is right – after what seemed like a formidably long time – I have a job! So, on the return journey to Grenoble, and inevitably to work, my thoughts were consumed by the metaphorical journey I took to get to where I was … it felt like a round-the-world trip, with multiple stopovers!

Until I had coffee with a lovely American girl, I felt that I was on the aforementioned sojourn alone – I imagined I had been the only one ever to have temporarily placed my life on hold to be with the man of my dreams, to live his dreams for a while, as mine simmered on some distant stove-top. However, as we chatted it emerged that she had decided to take a slight detour from the road she was traveling on when her husband received a job offer here. I felt relieved – even though she had been through many of the bureaucratic and emotional ups and downs that I had had to endure – as I was not alone anymore. Actually I would come to learn that the round-the-world was almost over-booked!

Even though my dear husband was very supportive and really encouraged me to get “out there” and look for the job I now have, and be able to write about it here, I really felt as if I had started this metaphorical travel with no preparation – I hadn’t purchased the latest guide book, I didn’t know the sites to see and I didn’t even think to take a language course … so when I ended up on the road, I felt as nervous as if I was going to hitchhike solo the whole way, and just hope that I arrived at the destination I was intended for.

After the coffee with my, now, dear American friend I started thinking there must be others out there like me, wandering around in the wilderness of a round-the-world which wasn’t entirely self motivated. In fact, I found a conglomerate of women living lives they would otherwise not have expected.

Now I have a job, in a profession I adore, and feel a somewhat useful part of society my lost days are few and far between. However, I have spoken to some women who still feel lost, after many years of being here. The decision was not entirely theirs in the first instance, to move to Grenoble, they “followed” – for want of a better word – their husbands here and have never really found their Grenoble feet. These women left good jobs, independence and a place where they felt at home to be with the one they love, but sadly the love of the town has never found them.

Then there are the women who have had a wonderful transition (are these the ones who acquired an upgrade to first class on their round-the-world, I wonder?!) and have not felt as if they have given up their path in lieu of their partner’s, but more taken a segue for a limited period and see many positives in the entirety of the adventure – new place, new language, new friends and an experience they would not otherwise have had.

After speaking to many women (and I know I keep mentioning women, it is not that I assume this situation only happens to women, but during my discussions on the topic of partners following partners, I only heard two separate rumours about men who came to Grenoble because their wives had jobs here) being in Grenoble for many different reasons – marriage, husband’s job, husband’s contract, boyfriend’s research etc. – I came to the conclusion that even though we are all on the same metaphorical journey we will all come home with different travel stories. Some may suffer from travel sickness, while others don’t. Some are in first class, while there are many of us in an overcrowded economy. Some get the interactive TV screens, while for some it is offline for a while, and they must wait for it to be reset. Whatever the situation the journey itself is seemingly memorable.

I would like to thank all the women who shared their stories with me, and I would like to make you aware that each of you has enhanced my round-the-world more than you will know!

Need advice on giving constructive criticism? photo: rocksee

The Working Women’s Network of Grenoble (WWNG) will hold a Personal and Professional Development Seminar entitled “The Power of Feedback: Using Criticism Constructively” on Saturday, June 5, 2010 at Grenoble’s Mercure President hotel.

The seminar comes on the heels of the successful March 2010 “Personal Branding through Social Media” workshop facilitated by WinSoft International Social Networks Manager Kelly Rigotti. The WWNG seminar series provides unique opportunities to benefit from the insights of high-level international professionals. The June 2010 seminar will be facilitated by international trainer, facilitator, and certified coach Marie-José Astre-Démoulin, who works for a leading NGO in Geneva and who delivers workshops for private clients on an exceptional basis.

Turing criticism into opportunities in the workplace

Have you ever had to tell an employee that they must make improvements in their work? It’s hard to tell someone they are not meeting expectations – and yet all managers should know how to do this. Have you ever had a negative performance appraisal yourself? It’s not enough to defend yourself well – you also need to hear what’s behind the criticism and address the underlying issues. Have you ever had a customer vocally dissatisfied with your services? Hearing negative feedback is one of the most difficult communication issues that professionals face.

This full-day, hands-on seminar given in English will provide you with effective tools to handle these difficult situations with grace and turn them to your professional advantage. Trainer Astre-Démoulin will take participants step-by-step through a proven feedback process designed to reduce tension and increase cooperation in the workplace.  

Space is limited to 24 participants, and the seminar program will be customized to meet participant needs based on a personal questionnaire. Translation company owner Sara Freitas-Maltaverne, who attended this seminar in 2009, explains, “Going into the seminar, I was getting ready to ‘let go’ of a client due to increasingly tense relations. Marie-José presented a process that helped me turn the relationship around. A year later not only am I still working with the client, but our relationship has deepened and we have even developed new business opportunities together.”

Registration for the WWNG Seminar is open to the public. Registration is €85 for WWNG members and €105 for non-members. The registration fee includes the full-day seminar, lunch with the group, and two coffee breaks. For more information or to register, visit the website.

Les Halles Sainte Claire, Grenoble

Grenoble Life’s Christina Rebuffet-Broadus walks Les Halles Sainte Claire, Grenoble’s foremost covered market and former convent, now site to a “divine experience of another kind”.

France wouldn’t be the same without the places that fire the wanderlust of francophiles everywhere. There are the cafés for people-watching and sipping an espresso in the sun. There are the Gothic cathedrals with spires straight out of a Victor Hugo novel. Then there are the open air markets, a sort of grand mass for the foodies of France. Almost every Sunday, I show up for service at Les Halles Sainte Claire for my weekly indulgence.

The Sainte Claire site once offered a divine experience of another kind. From the 15^th century, Clairisse nuns saved the city’s soul from inside the convent that once stood here. As industrialization conquered 19^th century France, the citizens of Grenoble needed physical rather than spiritual nourishment and the city decided to build a modern marketplace—the Halles Saint Claire, in 1874. The Grenoblois have been “going marketing,” as Julia Child would say, at Place Sainte Claire ever since.

Inside the Eiffel-esque glass and metal building, all those things that we expats love about French markets swirl about. There are a few cheese stalls with wide selections of what France does best. A baker offers classic baguettes and an assortment of more sophisticated pains. There are meat, fish, and poultry sellers for the protein. A few stands offer ready to eat delights if you can’t face the stove or wait to get back home to dig in.

There are a few stands that have upped my consumption of certain dishes. I’m almost on a first name basis with the sauerkraut lady (I said almost) of La Fée Maison. This young woman is like my French food fairy godmother. Ever tried to find good take-home choucroute in Grenoble? Well, here it is. This woman hails from the hearty land of Alsace and regularly goes back to select her cabbage farmers. She’ll also help you pick out the meats to serve with all that fermented cabbage—there’s a secret to choosing, but you’ll have to ask the expert.

Al Dente is the other stand that makes mush of my will power. Their homemade gnocchi measures up to the store bought stuff about the same way discount Carrefour glace does to artisanal Italian gelato. They always have a few olives set on the counter for sampling, but it’s the colorful antipasti and dried fruits that will catch your culinary eye.

Les Halles Sainte Claire isn’t just about the food—the sellers are as much a part of the experience as the food they sell. There’s the Harley riding chicken man that invited my husband and I to a rockabilly soirée at a neon-lit biker bar somewhere on the route nationale between Crolles and Chambéry. If you’re looking for a juicy poulet de Bresse or a jumping Teddy Boy joint, he’s your man. Catty corner to the chicken man, there’s the Chesire cat-grinning butcher. This man was born to be a butcher. Not so much for the kooky smile as for the savory paupiettes de veau that he ties up by the dozen. Go early if you plan on picking some up.

In fact, go early period, especially on Saturdays. Like anywhere in France, Saturday is synonymous with shopping crowds and trying to navigate the alley ways with a caddy full of groceries can be an exercise in patience and learning to live without personal space. Accept now that you will be trampled by little old ladies. That’s when it’s time to shop not in the halles, but around the halles.

“Ooh, pour ça il faut voir avec ma femme là-bas, c’est elle qui fait la cuisine et je suis pas encore mort! C’est que c’est pas trop mauvais!”

More brouhaha from the fruit & vegetable man?

Much of the brouhaha outside comes from the vegetable man who converses with his customers as if they all wore hearing aids. That’s how everyone in line learned that the secret of sautéeing buttery chanterelles baffled me. But I got a good recipe from his wife, not to mention a free bouquet of parsley, and a complimentary kiwi before being sent off with a few kilos of fruits and vegetables (my mom would be so proud) for around 10 euros. The quantity of produce carted away always seems to defy the low price and really, who doesn’t love those hollering market sellers?

The market at Les Halles Sainte Claire is convenient as the sellers set up shop every day except Monday, until around 1 p.m. On Fridays and Saturdays, the inside stands even stay open until 7 p.m. so that shoppers can prepare for weekend dinners with friends. Shopping starts as early as 6 a.m., so technically you could pick up some groceries before going to work.

Marketing can be hard fun. After a morning of poring over produce and poultry, you’ll find me at Le Zinc, a postcard of a bistro that usually has a few tables set up just opposite Les Halles. Watching this picturesque part of France from behind a grand crème offers the perfect reward for loading up on all those vegetables.

Sainte Claire, paradoxically, is unique and much like the outdoor markets all over Grenoble. It reminds us of the France that Julia Child loved, the France that M.F.K. Fisher praised, a France that still exists somewhat, defying the million metre carré Carrefours. A France that wants to enjoy grocery shopping as foreplay to a good meal. Customers come to savor the food, not just consume it. The nuns may be gone, but Sainte Claire still serves up a certain spiritual nourishment for the gourmets of Grenoble.

Radio. Photo: stigwaage

The March 28 English Talk Radio show features guest Kate Daligault of Banque Rhône-Alpes in Grenoble talking about banking in France, and Mary Zaccai interviews Kristine Minski and Vivian Draper about five years doing the show.

English Talk Radio is a talk show in English on 90.8 Radio Campus Grenoble. We talk about film, theatre, finance, restaurants, travel, and have a variety of topical guests. We are four presenters: Kristine Minski talks about finance, Christina Menez talks about China, Mary Zaccai talks about student issues, and Vivian Draper – animatrice/rédactrice – hosts the show. Every Sunday at 12.30pm, and every Wednesday at 7pm on 90.8, Radio Campus Grenoble and live on www.campusgrenoble.org – and also here on Grenoble Life.

Listen to the full show: here

Odyssey Intercultural

Michelle Mielly is MSc Marketing Program Director at Grenoble Graduate School of Business. She talks to Grenoble Life about her background, adapting to life in France and Odyssey Intercultural, the training consultancy she founded.

Grenoble Life: What is Odyssey Intercultural and who is it for?

Michelle Mielly: Odyssey Intercultural is a brand I created four years ago in my work as a consultant with Act’Rmc here in Grenoble. Its name reflects the long and multi-faceted journey that one experiences when working and living interculturally.

The training I have developed targets individuals, teams, and organizations wishing to acquire greater intercultural competency. They may be involved in an acculturation/expatriation process, working in a multicultural team environment, experiencing the ins and outs of a corporate merger or international joint venture, or managing any form of diversity in an organization. Any of these common situations requires intercultural competency.

GL: What are some of the dangers of poor intercultural understanding and management?

Michelle: Stated simply, failure is the biggest danger. Failure in business ventures is often attributed to incompatibilities in strategy, business models, operational technicalities, or management styles. However, when one looks at some of the most spectacular failures in international business, the hidden dimension of culture is often the origin.

The examples are multiple: Disney’s implantation strategy in France and in Hong Kong, the Daimler-Chrysler merger, Lucent-Alcatel’s missed mission, Schneider Electric’s difficulties with a number of its foreign subsidiaries, and many more. Some of these examples illustrate that cultural issues create great obstacles, but the good news is that you can overcome them with hard work and the investment of time.

Another danger is missed opportunities. Creating a bad first impression takes a long time to correct, so it’s better to go into international business with an open mind and conscientious preparation. Many opportunities are lost due to individual cultural differences that inhibited the establishment of a long lasting and productive relationship.

When people don’t feel respected, if they perceive a lack of interest on the part of the other, if they lack the fundamental trust at the foundations of the relationship, or if they think they are being stereotyped negatively, they go into defensive mode. Most of the time they actually start behaving in ways that may confirm the other’s stereotypes!

It must be stressed that in speaking of cultural differences in the corporate context, we are often talking about corporate, and not national or regional cultures. There are dozens of examples of mergers or acquisitions between the same national cultures, but the corporate cultures involved were profoundly imprinted and elusive to change.

GL: Odyssey Intercultural specializes in European-North American relations. Could you elaborate on how these relations can be complicated or sensitive and why Grenoble in particular might require such a service?

Michelle: Cultural differences exist between any two cultures: just looking at Western Europe’s dazzling diversity is overwhelming! Statistically speaking along national cultural dimensions, there are much greater differences between France and Denmark for example than there are between France and the US.

So why train people to work better with North Americans (Canadians and US)? Precisely because there is an incorrect perception, due to excessive and sustained commercial and popular culture exposure, that these cultures are familiar, superficial, and that there is not much more to know about them.

Upon closer examination, however, one finds differences of deep and significant import. It is one thing to watch American sitcoms, eat at McDonald’s, study the English language, visit Toronto or the Grand Canyon for two weeks. It is absolutely another to work, communicate, and negotiate with North Americans on a daily basis.

One example: the perception of time. First, is time a disposable resource? What is an acceptable turnaround time in responding to an email (reactivity levels)? What is the best way to organize time allocation for a project, or just for a meeting? How does one divide one’s personal time from professional time and is this necessary? Should people be available during vacation periods? How much vacation is necessary? What are the expected working hours in companies?

Grenoble’s high tech economy provides a stunning example of how globalization has simultaneously simplified and complicated our work environment. And this environment has an impact on our personal lives as well (increased travel, the need to work odd hours to accommodate conf calls internationally, etc.).

Managers now have teams working 24/7 on their global projects, so deep integration through collaborative technology is a reality today. An industrial project, for example, involves teams in multiple time zones with multiple local environments that contrast sharply from one site to another.

While technically we have the means to run long and short term projects across the globe, on a personal individual level, we often simply do not have the intercultural tools at our disposal to sustainably manage the complexity of the different cultural realities that each site and international counterpart presents throughout the project lifetime.

Partnerships in many forms between Grenoble-based organizations and North American organizations are extremely common and new ones are forming constantly. Due to the perceived similarity of our cultures, most of my clients do not see a need for my services at the start of the project, but usually begin to perceive the need once the challenges have begun to appear.

GL: Why and how did you set it up?

Michelle: I set up this activity to be able to develop trainings that had begun to be requested by local companies to whom I had been referred. As in any activity, a couple of companies ‘took a chance’ with me and offered me a first opportunity to develop a training on French-American intercultural communication.

Thanks to their confidence, I was able to get my grounding in this fascinating field and to develop and test my trainings on people directly working in the corporate environment. My work with people on both the French and American sites of these organizations has helped me see the importance of working with people on both sides of the fence.

GL: Tell us a little about your background

Michelle: Ethnographically speaking I fully identify myself as a southerner: born and raised in Texas to parents from Louisiana and Oklahoma. I grew up in a small town outside of Houston, where I spent a great deal of my time riding my horses and learning the value of simplicity and the happiness of being outdoors.

I started learning French when I was about 15 and then switched from the rodeo circuit to the international summer exchange circuit. I worked my way through undergraduate studies, three graduate programs including Pennsylvania State U and Harvard, and in between got some great experience working in the field.

Trained in linguistics, foreign language pedagogy, intercultural studies and anthropology, I’m politically progressive but culturally conservative. I am proud of my roots and the values I received from them and encourage my students and clients to never lose sight of those values, no matter how much adaptation they must do internationally.

GL: You’ve also worked in Africa and Central America, can you tell us a little about this and how it influenced your thinking.

Michelle: In my 20s I spent a lot of my time backpacking—Europe, Latin America, SE Asia, Africa. Studying comparative literature with a focus on contemporary Central American writers led me to Costa Rica where I had an exceptional experience. I wrote for the local English speaking paper in San José, translated the poetry of Ana Istaru, and had the chance to manage an ecotourism outfitter in the Northwestern pacific region of Guanacaste with 14 employees. This experience made it clear to me that development work was for me.

When I went on to study for the Ph.D. at Harvard, I focused on Francophone African civilizations with a focus on modern day cultural producers and how they contribute to economic and cultural development. I got to live and work with the extraordinary artist Werewere Liking in the Ki Yi Village, Ivory Coast.

These experiences involved huge amounts of negotiation, adaptation, and exhausting reappraisals of my priorities. I initiated as a part of my doctoral thesis for example a US tour of seven African artists in the US in 2004 involving 10 universities across the US, from New York all the way to Ohio.

I began to recognize that I had a certain ease in working with very different cultures and in coordinating among diverse partners in complex situations, constantly negotiating for the best compromise for all. I had in fact through these experiences developed my own working philosophy and own tools, but not until my work in intercultural management had I actually started thinking about them in terms of knowledge transmission.

GL: Concerning European-North American relations – as I’m British, where do I fit in? Do your clients ask for intercultural training on British working and cultural habits? How are we often perceived by others (wrongly or rightly)?

Michelle: Well, you and I have a lot in common in terms of cultural heritage. The US could be considered to simply be the most successful colony of the Commonwealth! And yes, I have actually been asked for help in companies working with the British, but I always involve a British colleague or graduate student in order to legitimize my work on that culture, to provide the most authentic training possible.

In terms of perceptions, the French have the perception that the British are not as trustworthy as the Americans. I think both cultures (French and English) perceive the other as ‘perfidious’, as traditionally both sides of the Channel have portrayed the other as capable of treason. Idiomatic expressions such as filer à l’anglais or ‘to take French leave’ illustrate the mistrust. And who can blame either? There is a lot of water under that bridge of collective memory.

Another perception that the French have is that the British have a more complex communication style with more ‘code’ and irony. And that is one that I fully agree with!

GL: What are some of the difficulties you have faced adapting to life in France and how have you overcome them?

Michelle: In terms of my greatest difficulties to adapting to France in particular, I think most of them were due to differing communication styles and my own unrealistic expectations. These created great obstacles for me here, and it took me some time to have close French friends.

I had learned from my southern American upbringing and values, what we call southern gentility, that there are certain things you just cannot do, for example:

It is impolite to confront or challenge others’ ideas in public, particularly if you do not know the person well. It is impolite to say provocative things about another country or civilization in front of the person representing that country. It is not kind to interrupt someone when they are speaking. It is not good manners to correct another person’s accent or pronunciation if they are learning your language. Finally, outside of communication issues, it is extremely rude to jump in front of someone in a line (or a queue as you say in the UK).

I progressively discovered to my astonishment that all of these behaviors were common in France, part of the way people operate here generally. It is perfectly fine to criticize others in order to spark a debate or discussion, to see whether you are capable of holding your own when it comes to rhetorical skills (of which the French have plenty).

It’s part of their philosophical heritage to critique other civilizations and to look upon the outside world as less attractive than France, but they actually want you to convince them otherwise. That’s why they provoke heated discussions which are in no way unfriendly. A sign of a strong relationship between two people here is to be able to argue heatedly and passionately with each other, often in public.

Frequent interruptions in France are normal and common in discussions, formal and informal. Correcting someone’s French is the only way to help that person avoid sounding ridiculous to others, and having someone else correct them later.

Last but not least, if you do not have a strong territorial strategy for defending your place in a queue, people will simply cut in front of you. It was me who needed to adapt my behaviors and expectations to this new environment, to shift from passive to active mode.

GL: Could you give Grenoble Life readers some tips on adapting to life in France?

Michelle: I think the above description could suffice: it’s all about changing your expectations and recognizing your cultural limitations in order to move on. If French people seem strange, rude, or complicated to you, they may be thinking the exact thing of you! You have to be a lot more flexible in another country than you are at home, you have to tolerate a lot more discomfort and sense of displacement.

It can really be frustrating at times and often discouraging. The movement from one place to another, literally translatio, requires a self-reflexive capacity for adapting to the new environment and to those with whom you are in contact. Yet more important than any of this is having a strong dose of empathy. In other words, forcing oneself into the uneasy position of the other, and trying at all times to imagine things from their perspective.

See www.odysseyintercultural.com for more info.

Gratin dauphinois. Photo: Marylise Doctrinal

It’s a no-brainer really. Grenoble Life wants your comments about favourite things to see, do, eat and drink in Grenoble and its surroundings.

I have been asked by French Entrée to write a post on what to do and see in Grenoble. Upon tackling this in earnest I found myself baulking at the task. An increasingly poorly written list began with a walk to the Bastille, continuing through the various museums to barely legible mentions of the more attractive squares in the old town. Then, I thought, rather than regurgitating the generic Grenoble itinerary, I thought I would solicit a more idiosyncratic list of Grenoblois pleasures, open to suggestions from YOU. What and where do you like to eat, where do you drink and people-watch? Tell me about your favourite local walks, markets, parks, neighbourhoods.

Here is my idiosyncratic inventory of Grenoble favourites, a by-no-means-comprehensive list of reasons to be cheerful. I’m sorry if this heralds few surprises and all seems a bit generic … please use the comments box for your personal lists below.

• ‘Glacier Gonzales’ (Rue Servan). As good as ice cream gets, in my view.
• Driving along the Voie Sur Berge, with its colourful diaporama of the Quai opposite, reminds me of the climax of The Italian Job, even if my Citroën Saxo is not a Mini Cooper and I’m in the wrong country.
• Cycling the banks of the Isère, with its generous network of lanes.
• The crazy geometric paving stones on the University campus. Far out!
• The crumbling beauty of the St Laurent district.
• Drinking kirs and people watching on Place St André (aka Place du Trib) in the summer.
• Sitting on the sofas at the musée de Grenoble when it’s quiet, which it usually is.
• Tartes and hot chocolate at ‘Tarteline’ (Grande Rue).
• Fromage blanc at the dairy farm at Charmant Som, with bilberry coulis.
• Fondue at ‘A Confesse’ in St Laurent
• Parmigiana at ‘Ciao a Te’ (Rue de la Paix)
• Pizza in general. But if I am to be perfectly honest, my favourite pizzas come from a camionette in Montbonnot rather than one of the many along the Quai or elsewhere in Grenoble itself. However, it is my contention that you can find a good pizza more easily in Grenoble than in the tourist hot-spots in Italy itself.
• The tram. Being on the tram makes me happy, even it doesn’t go anywhere near my home. Watching it glide onto campus or snake through the old town makes me misty-eyed with pride and affection for my adopted home town.
• Bastille Day fireworks at Parc Paul Mistral.
• Being able to watch a football match at the Stade des Alpes and then stroll back into town for a beer. Even if the standard of football from the home side has been appalling this season.
• La Nef and Le Club. Old school cinemas with dependable art house programmes.
• Gratin dauphinois when it is freshly made (i.e., not resurrected after deep-freeze hibernation). To my memory, the best I’ve had in a restaurant was at the ‘Café des Alpes’ on the way up to Le Sappey ski resort.
• La Fête de la Musique. A nationwide event, admittedly, but one that impressed upon me something about the French. In England such an event could not happen without copious amounts of drink and drugs, and thus a heavy police presence – a sentiment echoed in Lucy Wadham’s The Secret Life of France (a book well worth reading by the way).
• The old town. I was surprised when I came to Grenoble how many French people – Grenoblois or not – were dismissive about the city, saying it wasn’t beautiful. It may not have great monuments of individual interest but I like the character of the old town and its attractive squares. You can give me this over the British high street, with its identikit shopping precincts, any day.
• The white-capped Belledonne massif, providing its luminous theatre scenery to the city.

Ok, your turn …

Upstage website

The March 10 English Talk Radio show was recorded at the Cité Scolaire Internationale de Grenoble, and includes an interview with the director, the cast and the crew of Upstage, which is putting on two plays: Loot by Joe Orton and Mountain Language by Harold Pinter, performing March 22–27 at 7:30 pm at the Théâtre Ste-Marie-d’en-Bas.

English Talk Radio is a talk show in English on 90.8 Radio Campus Grenoble. We talk about film, theatre, finance, restaurants, travel, and have a variety of topical guests. We are four presenters: Kristine Minski talks about finance, Christina Menez talks about China, Mary Zaccai talks about student issues, and Vivian Draper – animatrice/rédactrice – hosts the show. Every Sunday at 12.30pm, and every Wednesday at 7pm on 90.8, Radio Campus Grenoble and live on www.campusgrenoble.org – and also here on Grenoble Life.

Listen to the full show: here

Microphone. Photo: hiddedevries

English Talk Radio is a talk show in English on 90.8 Radio Campus Grenoble. We talk about film, theatre, finance, restaurants, travel, and have a variety of topical guests. We are four presenters: Kristine Minski talks about finance, Christina Menez talks about China, Mary Zaccai talks about student issues, and Vivian Draper – animatrice/rédactrice – hosts the show. Every Sunday at 12.30pm, and every Wednesday at 7pm on 90.8, Radio Campus Grenoble and live on www.campusgrenoble.org – and also here on Grenoble Life.

The February 24 English Talk Radio show took place at Université Stendhal with Caroline Schlenker and students of the English department acting class.  Listen to the full show: here

Looking For Sam, March 10-11, 2010

Caroline Schlenker instructs the acting class for students in the English department at Stendhal. She talks to Grenoble Life about staging plays with her students, teaching English through drama, and this year’s production, Looking For Sam, March 10-11.

Grenoble Life: What is your role in the Stendhal English department theatre workshop?

Caroline Schlenker: I am the instructor of this course. I teach the core acting class as part of the English Licence Degree for second year students, as an alternative class to the conversation module. I teach diction, pronunciation, basic drama techniques, and stage the students’ production each year. The workshop meets every week for two hours (but there are additional rehearsals for the play). 

GL: How often does the department put on a play?

Caroline: Last year, we exceptionally put on two plays (Once Upon A Time In A Screen/Stage Audience, a project between cinema and theatre, in partnership with the cinema le Club in Grenoble; and Macbeth, staged by third year students). This year, however, we will only put on the play Looking For Sam, although the third year students will present a short extract of their own work as a (surprise) opening to the Sam Shepard play. It is a play they have written (!) and staged. 

GL: What kinds of plays and themes do you normally tackle?

Caroline: It varies. We put on Harold Pinter sketches thanks to the chance meeting of Susan Blattes, then head of the English Department, and the actor/director Patrick Seyer at a Pinter play. Their encounter led to the idea of a joint venture on Pinter with the English Department. The project was then to work on Pinter through the specificity and rhythm of his language and the relationship between the characters that this language thus establishes. The students worked on the texts through the drama in the English class I was teaching, and shaped their characters through the staging by the professional director Mr Seyer.

This partnership was so interesting and stimulating in fact it led us to work together again on a project on cinema, Once Upon a time in a Screen/Stage audience, which I directed whilst he did the actor training (in English!). For this project, the idea of working on the different spaces of theatre and cinema was an idea I always wanted to tackle. Cinema has always fascinated me. 

The Macbeth project was an idea of the students, who asked to work on Shakespeare and studied the staging of The Winter’s Tale at the MC2 in Grenoble. This year we are working on Sam Shepard as a way to explore the sound and musicality of American English – a way for us to approach language differently, once again. Working with a musician helped me to have yet another approach to the language, and to the text!

GL: Who chooses the script?

Caroline: Setting aside the Pinter and the Macbeth projects, I choose the script!

GL: How long does it take to prepare and rehearse for one play? Tell us a little about what it involves.

Caroline: We have some basic drama classes between September and December (where we work on literary classics such as Pygmalion or the works of Oscar Wilde, or some other types of classics such as Monty Python and Rowan Atkinson’s stand up comedy drills) in order to practice pronunciation and intonation and learn some basic conversational techniques, such as how to make a point, or how to make the other person react in some way with words. We also learn voice and body integration, and we explore imagination through the English language (the only language spoken in class!).

When working on a text, we learn to think about a character’s goals, tactics, his relationship with the other characters and we write his curriculum vitae. In January, we get our texts for the final production (I write the transitions for our scenes, and our rehearsals start). Each group rehearses about four hours a week (each scene constitutes a group – there are four scenes). So I see them about 10 hours a week (two hours are with the whole class during our actual class time). We perform in March. A lot of commitment and motivation is involved in this process!

GL: Tell us more about this year’s production.

Caroline: It’s an exploration into Sam Shepard’s work. You see, Sam Shepard once told an interviewer: “I preferred a character that was constantly unidentifiable, shifting through the actor, so that the actor could play almost anything, and the audience was never expected to identify with the characters,” With his shifting vision of identity, the way in which he portrayed the characters in his plays, Shepard was giving away a bit of himself.

Our question then was: who is this Sam Shepard, and is he as a writer shying away from revealing his true self? Another component of his character that intrigued us was his love for music, and his failure to become a musician. Through the play Looking For Sam, we decided to make an imaginary investigation into how Sam Shepard wrote his plays. With the collaboration of a local songwriter/ singer Noel Belmondo, we invented the musical (and linguistic) scenery for the text. 

It is our fantasy, through the influences of rhythm and music we found in the language, of how the text came to be. We hope the audience will be driven to the special space created by an artist at work! The play includes excerpts of some of his most famous plays: True West, Curse of the Starving Class, La Turista (which is about, as its name so aptly suggests, Turista!) and Buried Child. The play is free of course and will be performed at 7.30pm on March 10^th and 11^th, 2010, at the Amphidice, the theatre in Stendhal University.

GL: Tell us about some highlights from previous years.

Caroline: All the projects and moments we shared in the drama workshop were equally wonderful thanks to the incredible involvement of the students – it’d be hard for me to pick!

GL: Tell us a little about your background and how you came to be involved with the Stendhal English department theatre workshop?

Caroline: I got hired as a Maître de Langue just as Mr Seyer got hired to work on his project – and it just happened that Ms Blattes, then head of the department, knew I had some background in acting. I accepted to take the workshop, which had been closed since the departure (retirement) of the last professor in charge of the workshop: Mr. Derioz.

GL: How effective are theatre and acting as a way to learn English?

Caroline: It is incredible. The students start off reluctant to speak English and end up speaking English to each other in the corridor – what can I add? Some no longer notice they’re switching between languages by the time we get to the final performance! Their confidence in their ability to speak is what impresses me most. They feel they are able to be actor of their world in another language. It would be too long to explain – why don’t you come to our Colloquium on the subject at the University on March 5th? It’s also at Amphidice!

GL: Tell us about your audience and some of the feedback you’ve had.

Caroline: We’ve had a large audience, ranging from acting professionals to families of the actors, fellow students, Cité Internationale teachers and students, and the English department professors (and other professors from the Drama and Languages departments!) and staff of course. Everyone is impressed with just how much the students get involved in this project, and it is so important for the students to have them there!

GL: How can we get tickets for the play?

Caroline: For any information or for reservations, please contact the service Culture de l’Université Stendhal: Tél: 04 76 82 41 05. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday : 10 am–12 am and 2pm – 4pm/ or by email: caroline.schlenker (at) u-grenoble3.fr

Pat Brans

Grenoble-based Pat Brans is founder of the Master the Moment time-management method, giving speeches and training sessions at companies and organisations around the region and beyond. He tells Grenoble Life about his work, his background, and how to get a higher return on your efforts.

Grenoble Life: Tell us a little about your background

Pat Brans: I started my career as a software engineer. I also did some management. This was for four different startups in the Washington D.C. area. I then got into business consulting, and was director of a team of business consultants with CSC in Cologne, Germany. After three years there, I moved to Grenoble to work with HP, where I got more involved in business development, and eventually took charge of a set of solutions where we applied mobile technology to optimize workforce effectiveness. I was in charge of these solutions world wide. We called these offerings “mobile field sales and services”, because we mostly applied our solutions to help our customers make their sales and service forces more efficient. During this time, I wrote my first book called Mobilize Your Enterprise: Achieving Competitive Advantage through Wireless Technology.

I got to know a lot of people in the industry, and was offered a job with Sybase to manage strategic alliances across Europe. The software we sold was used for mobile applications, mostly applications geared towards worker productivity. I frequently gave talks on this subject at events from Dubai to Lisbon. And in dealing with the partners I managed, sometimes I had to give them ideas on how technology can make people do their work better and faster.

In summary, starting from my arrival in Grenoble twelve-and-a-half years ago, it gradually became very natural for me to talk about productivity.

GL: In a nutshell – what is the Master the Moment method and how was it developed?

PB: I have always been interested in understanding why some people get so much more done than others, and why those who get more done are actually less tired. Throughout my career, I tried to note who I thought was more personally effective, and I tried to learn from them. I kept mental notes on things like how to best run meetings, how to best participate in meetings, how to delegate, and how to be delegated to.

Coincidentally, my work life over the last twelve years has involved thinking of ways of making people more productive through the use of technology. I say “coincidentally”, because these two sets of ideas run along separate dimensions. Giving people tools to make them more efficient is a good idea, but it won’t make the order-of-magnitude difference you’ll get through rethinking your attitude towards goals, making the right choices about priorities, and overcoming the tendancy to procrastinate.

I read tons of books on time management and I read lots of psychology research papers, but this was all theory. And I never saw any approach to time management that was based on emperical data – in other words, going out and asking high achievers what they think. So I picked the set of people I thought have the most to say about time management. And when I use the “term time management”, I’m refering to anything and everything you can do with your time to make you more effective. What can you do to emulate the people who get a lot done without breaking a sweat?

The category of people I selected were CEOs of large corporations. I talked to fifty different CEOs of organisations with revenue of $2 billion on average. These people are themselves very effective – and equally as important, they are perfectly positioned to observe hundreds of other people and develop a well-founded opinion on why some people achieve more satisfaction than others.

Over the last 18 months I synthesised what I learned from the CEOs, what I got from psychology research, and what I learned from other books on time management. The result is Master The Moment, which is my methodology on time management. One of favorite aspects of MTM is that it aims to help people change habits. All the good ideas I got from my research mean nothing until the readers of my book, and the people who attend my training or seminars, integrate the ideas and make them habit.

In order to integrate an idea, you have to understand it, and you have to take it on freely – it can’t be forced upon you. I checked my work by talking this over with leading psychologists, such as Ed Deci and Roy Baumeister.

To change habits, it helps to have a visual reminder. Also the ability to change habits is something you can develop. My approach to developing good time management habits is taken from Benjamin Franklin and his approach to developing Thirteen Virtues. As a young man, Franklin listed 13 areas in which he would like to develop better habits. Every week he would work on one, finishing the list after 13 weeks, then starting over. He would carry around a notebook in which he would mark everytime he reverted to a bad habit in any of the thirteen areas – not just the area of focus for that week.

I have six steps to better time management. Each step is a category of habits. I have sheets I give students to allow them to track progress in each area. I ask them to focus on one step every week. The sheet serves as a visual reminder, which is very important in habit forming. I follow up with a phone call to each participant around two months after the training.

You’ll never achieve perfection, but if you can change one or two habits, you’ll make a lot of progress.

GL: Why do you think time management is such a big issue in the modern workplace?

PB: I think time management has always been important. Our ancestors were up against a lot of pressure – in most cases, much more pressure than we have to deal with today. Few of us have to deal with war, the death of our children, or hunger. Life is really easy, if you think about it.

I don’t want to minimise the issues people face today. But part of my training is around checking your attitude, and I think a lot of people have the attitude that their situation is really bad and that external forces are making them unhappy. You have to take responsibility for your situation and focus on the things you can change. The fact is, most of us in developed countries are pretty comfortable compared to 95% of the people who have ever walked the earth. I’m not a positive thinker, I’m just being realistic.

In today’s work environment, I see two groups. The first group sees work as a way to make a living – for these people, work is a burden and no fun. The second group is looking for self actualisation. They want to be somebody through their work.

It’s important to feel a sense of choice in what you do. If you feel like you have been coerced into doing something, you aren’t going to do a very good job, and you’ll feel deflated and tired. I don’t deny that we all have obligations, but the more effective people look to understand the reasons behind the obligations and as a result, they are able to integrate the activity. People who don’t understand why they have to do something, only introject the activity – it’s like swallowing something, but not digesting it.

So if you find yourself in the first group, try to find some meaning in what you do. Managing your attitude is probably the most powerful time management tool, and it’s one that people need to employ in today’s work environment.

GL: Do you believe that modern technology really has made us more efficient workers?

PB: Yes, of course. One danger though is that we get distracted. Studies have shown that people who try to do several things at once experience a dip in IQ. One study demonstrated that multitasking accounted for a bigger drop in IQ than smoking marijuana. Another study showed that if you are working on something then get distracted by a text message or a phone call, it takes you 20 minutes to get back into what you were doing 100%.

Just as you with any other tool, you need to look for ways of improving how you use technology tools. There’s always something you can do better.

GL: What are some of the risks associated with poor time management?

PB: Dissatisfaction. If you do a lot, but don’t notice that you’ve accomplished things, you won’t enjoy the satisfaction. Or if you just don’t do much, you’ll also feel frustrated. In either case, good time management techniques can enhance your life.

I don’t think people should aim to always be busy or to always be efficient. I tell people to obey natural laws. The first law is that you are a human being and you need to have fun, you need rest, and you need time off. Trying to get around those things is like trying to get around gravity. You can’t do it. You’ll eventually fall hard.

GL: Who have you spoken for and what feedback have you received?

PB: I’ve given training around Grenoble in both French and English, I’ve spoken at seminars, and I have a website. The feedback I get is that my method is different because it is a nice mix of powerful ideas and practical technique.

GL: As you are based in France, what differences can you observe between French company culture and that of your own or other countries?

PB: I think hierarchy is too important in French organizations. There’s not enough emphasis on creativity. Follow orders or you won’t fit in. This is a broad generalisation of course.

GL: How do you think  France compares to other nations in terms of work-life balance?

PB: I like the work-life balance in France. I think it’s more healthy than in the United States where the balance of power leans heavily towards employers, and employees have very little weight. In the United States we recognize the need for consumer groups to compensate for the power companies have over consumers, but we don’t apply this idea to the employer-employee relationship as I think we should.

People wind up working more hours in the United States, but I don’t think they’re more efficient.

GL: Do you offer events in French and English and is there a difference to how people of different nationalities respond to the method?

PB: I sometimes hear from the French that CEOs don’t know anything about time management, because all they do is delegate. Of course they do, and delegating is an important time management technique. You need to delegate down, sideways, and even up. In all cases, you’re asking somebody else to do something for you. The more the other person trusts you and understands the reasons behind you request, the better he or she will integrate the activity. If the other person feels a sense of choice in doing what you ask, you’ll get a better result.

GL: Asides from your speaking engagements you write for a number of publications: tell us what you write about and for whom.

PB: I also write for technology magazines about how to use mobile technology for workforce productivity. I write for three different publications: Mainframe Executive, British Computer Society and Mobile Enterprise Magazine.

GL: Tell us about some forthcoming events

PB: I will be hitting the American Chambers of Commerce in Lyon, Toulouse, and Strasbourg. Seminar dates and locations will be posted on my website. I will also be doing training in French through the chambers of commerce of different cities around here. I’m developing that now.

Aside from that, I provide training within companies.